LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

PRESENTED ^Y 

nN'ITKD STATES OF AMKHICA. 



/ 



/ / 



J 




SPEECHES 



SECOND AND THIRD SESSIONS 



THIRTY-SEVENTH CONGRESS, 



AND IN THE VACATION. 



BY BEN J. F. THOMAS. 



BOSTON: 

PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON. 

1S6.S. 



C0 mD grotbxt, 

WILLIAM THOMAS, ESQ., 

Eijis Fohtme is InscribelJ, 

AS A TOKEN OF ESTEEM, LOVE, AND GRATITUDE. 



" / set out with a iJtrfect distrust of my oion abilities ; 
a total renunciation of every speculation of my own; and 
with a' profound reverence for the wisdom of our ances- 
tors, ivho have left us the inheritance of so happy a con- 
stitution, and so fourishing an empire, and, what is a 
thousand times more valuable, the treasury of the maxims 
and principles which formed the one, and obtained the 
other,'- 

Blhke on Conciliation with America. 



N () T E. 



The speeches and addresses in this vokime cover a period 
of about fifteen months, inckiding the second and third 
sessions of the Thirty-seventh Congress and the vacation. 
I have put them in this form to meet the wishes of a 
few friends, in justice to myself, — that my position may 
not be misunderstood — and in the hope, not very buoy- 
ant, that they may do good. I am painfully sensible 
how fragmentary and defective they are. But the prin- 
ciples they seek to illustrate and defend are just and 
true, and will weather the storm. They constitute the 
traditional policy of the country, a return to which is, 
in my judgment, its only security. That they are un- 
popular at this moment, does not disturb me : the more 
imperative is the duty of standing by and upholding 
them. The citizen owes to the country, in the hour of 
her peril, honest counsel, calmly given, but with the 
" love that casteth out fear." Never were freedom of 
thought and of the lips and pen so necessary as now. 
They have become, not only the most precious of rights, 
but the most religious of duties. 



VI NOTE. 

In preparing for the printer, I have corrected a few 
of the errors of style. I have not felt at liberty to make 
material changes in the thought. In one or two in- 
stances (as in the remarks on the Conscription Bill), 
I have added, from notes, suggestions omitted at the 
time of delivery. The recurrence of the same idea, and 
of even the same expression, in different speeches on 
the same or kindred topics, could not well be avoided. 

From the remarks on the Trent case, I have stricken 
two or three sentences which were thought to breathe a 
spirit of vengeance ; a spirit the gospel does not permit 
us to indulge, even against the enemies of our country. 
Of the expressions of confidence in the conservative 
vie^^ s of the President, I can only say, I believed them 
well grounded when they were made. 



Jamaica Plain, May 2o, 1863. 



C O N T E X T S. 



I 



Page. 

The Relation of the " Seceded States " (so called) to 
THE Union, and the Confiscation of Property, and 

Emancipation of Slaves, in such States 1 

Confiscation 38 

The Treasury-Note Bill G6 

Recognition of Liberia and Hayti 79 

Death of Hon. Goldsmith F. Bailey 86 

Case of the "Trent" 91 

Speech at the Mass Meeting for Recruiting, on Boston 

Common 100 

The Ar^iy of the Reserve 104 

Speech at Chelsea * 128 

Remarks on the Border States 141 

On the Bill "to raise Additional Soldiers for the 

Service of the Government " . . . 14.j 

The Louisiana Selection Cases 1G4 

The Conscription Bill . . 184 

New England and the Union 19o 



SPEECHES. 



THE RELATION OF THE "SECEDED STATES" (SO CALLED) TO THE 
UNION, AND THE CONFISCATION OF PROPERTY, AND EMANCIPA- 
TION OF SLAVES, IN SUCH STATES, APRIL 10, 1862. 

The House being in Committee of the Whole on the State of 
the Union, Mr. Thomas said, — 

Mr. Chairman, — I avail myself of the indulgence of 
the Committee to make some suggestions upon subjects 
now attracting the attention of Congress and of the 
country, — the relations of the "seceded States" (so 
called) to the Union, the confiscation of property, and 
the emancipation of slaves, in such States. Sensible 
how deeply the interests of the country are involved in 
their right decision, I can only say, I have given to 
them careful and patient consideration, with an earnest 
hope and desire to learn what my duty is, and faithfully 
and firmly to discharge it. 

The questions are novel as they are momentous. 
In the discussion of them, little aid can be derived from 
our own precedents, from the history of other nations, 
or from writers on constitutional and international law. 
The solution of the diificult problems of right and duty 

1 • 



2 RELATION OF THE STATES 

involved must be found in the careful study of the prin- 
ciples of the Constitution, and the just and logical ap- 
plication of them to this new condition of things. 

The peculiar feature of our civil polity is, that -vve 
live under written constitutions, defining and limiting 
the powers of Government, and securing the rights of the 
individual subject. Our political theory is, that the peo- 
ple retain the sovereignty, and that the Government 
has such powers only as the people, by the organic law, 
have conferred upon it. Doubless these infiexible 
rules sometimes operate as a restraint upon measures, 
which, for the time being, seem to be desirable. The 
compensation is, that our experience has shown, that, 
as a general rule and in the long-run, the restraint is 
necessary and wholesome. 

It is, I readily admit, by no narrow and rigid con- 
struction of the words of the Constitution that the 
powers and duties of Congress on these subjects arc to 
be ascertained. Every provision must be fairly con- 
strued in view of the great objects the Constitution was 
ordained to effect, and with the full recognition of the 
powers resulting from clear implication as well as ex- 
press grant. Designed as the bond of perpetual union 
and as the framework of permanent government, we 
should be very slow to conclude that it lacked any of 
tlie necessary powers for self-defence and self-preserva- 
tion. 

l>nt reco^'ui/ing the profound wisdom and foresight 
of the Constitution, and its adaptation to all the exi- 
gencies of \\;ir and peace, Avlien a measure is proposed 
in apparent conllict with its [)ro\isions, Ave may wc^ll 



TO THE UNION. 3 

pause to inquire, whether, after all, the measure is ne- 
cessary ; and whether we may not bend to the Constitu- 
tion, rather than that the Constitution should give way 
to us. When we make necessity our lawgiver, we are 
very ready to believe the necessity exists. 

Nor are we to forget that the Constitution is a bill of 
rights as well as a frame of government ; that among 
the most precious portions of the instrument are the 
first ten amendments; that it is doubtful whether the 
people of the United States could have been induced to 
adopt the Constitution, except upon the assurance of 
the adoption of these amendments, which are our Magna 
Carta, embodying in the organic law the securities of 
life, liberty, and estate, which, to the Anglo-Saxon 
mind, are the seed and the fruit of free government. 
Some portions of our history have led to the conclusion, 
that the existence of these amendments may, in the 
confusion of the times, have been overlooked. 

In my humble judgment, Mr. Chairman, there has 
been, and is now, but one issue before the country; and 
that is, whether the Constitution of the United States 
shall be the supreme law of the land. That Constitu- 
tion was formed by the peojyie of the United States. It 
acts, not upon the States, nor, through the States, upon 
us as citizens of the several States, but directly upon us 
as citizens of the United States ; claiming, on the one 
hand, our allegiance, and giving to us, on the other, its 
protection. It is not a compact between the States, or 
the peoples of the several States : it is itself a frame 
of government ordained and established by the people of 
the United States. 



4: RELATION OF THE STATES 

The sphere of the Government so estabHshed is indeed 
limited ; but within that sphere its power is supreme. 
It is a Government of delegated powers ; and the powers 
not delegated are reserved either to the States or to the 
people (Amendments, art. 10). 

The powers and functions granted to the National 
Government by the Constitution are embraced in three 
general classes, — those concerning the relations of the 
United States to foreign nations ; those concerning the 
relations between the States and their citizens respec- 
tively ; and certain powders, which, though belonging to 
the home-department of Government, to be useful and 
effective, must be general and uniform in their opera- 
tion throughout the country. A very large proportion 
of the ordinary and necessary powers and functions of 
Government is left in the States. The powers of the 
National Government do not extend to or include the 
domestic institutions or internal police of the States. 
The separation and distinction between the respective 
spheres of the State and National Governments is an 
essential characteristic of our system, and is as old as 
tlie idea of Union itself No Union was suggested, 
no })roject of one for a moment entertained, on any 
otlier basis. The Colonies, in authorizing their dele- 
gates to assent to a separation from Great Britain, and 
to form a liiiou for the general defence, expressly 
restricted llicni iVoiii consenting to any articles of union 
which should lake from tlie Colonies the poAvcr over 
their internal police and domestic institutions. The 
resolutions of the Colonics ol" Xcw .horsey. Maivland, 
and Riiodc Island, niav be cited in ilhistration. 



TO THE UNION. 6 

The resolution of the Provincial Congress of New 
Jersey — passed June 21, 1776, and laid before the 
Continental Congress on the 28th of June — empowered 
the delegates of that Province to — 

" Unite with the delegates of the other Colonies in declaring the 
United Colonies independent of Great Britain ; entering into a con- 
federation for union and common defence ; making treaties with foreign 
nations for commerce and assistance ; and to take such other mea- 
sures as may appear to them and you necessary for these great 
ends ; promising to support them Avith the whole force of this Pro- 
vince ; always observing, whatever plan of confederacy you enter 
into, the regulating the internal 'police of this Province is to he reserved 
to the Colony Legislature." 

The Convention of the Colony of Maryland, by a 
resolution (adopted June 28, 1776, and laid before Con- 
gress July 1), authorized and empowered the deputies 
of the Colony to — 

"Concur with the other United Colonies, or a majority of them, 
in declaring the United Colonies free and independent, in favoring 
such further compact and confederation between them, in making 
foreign alliances, and in adopting such other measures as shall be 
judged necessary for securing the liberties of America ; and that said 
Colony will hold itself bound by the resolutions of the majority of the 
United Colonies in the premises ; provided the sole and exclusive right 
of regulating the internal government and police of that Colony be re- 
served to the people thereof." — Journals of Congress, 1776, pp. 390, 
391, 392. 

The credentials of the Assembly of Rhode Island, 
after giving to the delegates power to enter into union 
and confederation, add, — 

" Taking the greatest care to secure to this Colony, in the strongest 
and most perfect manner, its present established form, and all the 
powers of government, so far as relates to its internal police, and con- 
duct of our affairs, civil and religious." — Ibid., p. 343. 



b RELATION OF THE STATES 

In the Revolutionary Government, in the Articles of 
Confederation, in the Constitution, in its judicial inter- 
pretation, in every administration under the Constitu- 
tion, and in every department of the Government, the 
limitation has thus far heen carefully recognized and 
faithfully kept. This familiar, well-settled doctrine, as 
to the independent respective spheres of the National 
and State Government, has never, perhaps, heen more 
clearly and strongly stated than in one of the resolu- 
tions adopted by the Convention which ushered the 
present administration into power : — 

*^ Besolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the 
States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its 
own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, 
is essential to that balance of powers on Avhich the perfection and 
endurance of our jiolitical fabric depends." 

It is expressed also, with clearness and strength, in 
the resolution adopted by the House, near the close 
of the last session of Congress, by a nearly unanimous 
vote : — 

" Resolved, That neitlicr the Federal Government, nor the people 
or governments of the non-slavoholding States, have a purpose or a 
constitutional rij^ht to legislate upon or interfere with .slavery in any 
of the States of tlio Union." 

These doctrines, as to the supremacy of the National 
Government within its sphere and of the reserved 
rights of the States, are elementary. Between them 
there is no necessary conthct. I'.acli is tlie complement 
of" tlio other, — Indh \it;il parts of that political system 
tiiidcr wliosc adiiiiralilc distiihiitioii and adjustment of 
])o\vcrs the jX'oplc ot" the 1 iiiti'd States have liad for 



TO THE UNION. 7 

seventy years incomparably the best and most beneficent 
Government tlie world has ever known, — a Govern- 
ment now imperilled, not by reason of any inherent 
defect or any want of wisdom or foresight in its founders, 
not because we have outgrown its provisions, not be- 
cause it is behind the age ; but because it has fallen 
upon an age not worthy of it, — an age which has failed 
to appreciate the spirit of wisdom, prudence, and mode- 
ration, in which it was founded. 

Such being the relation of the Government of the 
United States to its citizens and to the States, the first 
question that arises is, how far this relation is affected 
by the fact that several of the States have assumed, by 
ordinances of secession, to separate themselves from the 
Union. 

The people of the United States, in and by the Con- 
stitution of the United States, established a National 
Government, without limitation of time, " for themselves 
and their posterity." It had been provided under the 
Articles of Confederation, that the Union should be 
perpetual. The Constitution was established to form 
"a more perfect union" than that of the Confederation ; 
more efficient in power, and not less durable in time. 
There is not a clause or word in the Constitution, which 
looks to separation. It has careful provisions for its 
amendment, none for its destruction ; capacity for ex- 
pansion, none for contraction ; a door for new States to 
come in, none for old or new ones to go out. An ordi- 
nance of secession has no legal meaning or force ; is 
wholly inoperative and void. The Constitution, and 
the laws and treaties made under it, the people have 



8 RELATION OF THE STATES 

declared, " shall be the supreme law of the land ; and 
the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any 
thing in the constitution or laws of any State to the 
contrary notwithstanding." The act of secession, there- 
fore, cannot change in the least degree the legal relation 
of the State to the Union. No provision of the Con- 
stitution of the United States, no law or treaty of the 
United States, can be abrogated or impaired thereby. 
No citizen of the United States, residing in the seceded 
States, is, by such ordinance of secession, deprived of 
the just protection of, or exempted from any of his 
duties to, the United States. In contemplation of law, 
the reciprocal duties of protection and allegiance remain 
unaffected. After the act of secession, the province 
and duty of the Government of the United States are 
the same, according to the full measure of its ability, as 
before, — to enforce in every part of the Union, and 
over every inch of its territory, the Constitution and 
laws of the United States. 

It is the necessary result of these principles, that no 
State can abrogate or forfeit the rights of its citizens to 
the protection of the Constitution of the United States, 
or the privileges and blessings of the Union which that 
Constitution secures and makes perpetual. The ]n-i- 
mary, paramoimt allegiance of every citizen of the 
United States is to the nation ; and tlie State authorities 
can no more impair that allegiance tlian a county court 
or a village constal)lo. Every proj)osition, however art- 
fully disguised, which seeks to give any effect or vitality 
to an ordinance of secession, for evil or for good, is 
itself a confession of the right. To say that an act of 



TO THE UNION. 9 

secession is inoperative and void against the Constitution, 
and that this void act, sustained by force, is a practical 
abdication of the rights of the State under the Con- 
stitution, is to blow hot and blow cold, to deny and affirm, 
in the same breath ; to state a proposition which is felo 
de se. 

It is also the plain and necessary conclusion, from 
the principles before stated, that a State cannot commit 
treason. Under the Constitution of the United States, 
2)ersons only can commit treason. How treason may be 
committed, and how tried and punished, the Constitu- 
tion points out (Constitution, art. 3, sect. 3; Amend- 
ments, arts. 5 and 6). The persons who for the time 
being hold the offices under a State Government may 
individually commit treason ; but the acts of the State 
officers, transcending their authority and in conffict with 
the Constitution of the United States, involve in their 
guilt no man who has not himself levied war against the 
United States, or adhered to their enemies, giving them 
aid and comfort. It is only we, the subjects, that can 
commit treason, or expiate its guilt. No man, or set of 
men, can, without our consent, involve us in the awful 
crime, or subject us to the awful penalties, of treason. 

As a State cannot commit the crime of treason, it 
cannot incur a forfeiture of its powers and functions as 
the penalty of treason. The punishment provided for 
traitors is the result of judicial trial, conviction, and 
judgment. How to indict a State, the constitution of 
the court, the mode of trial, the form of judgment, and 
process of execution, yet exist in gremio I eg is. Nor is 
it material that the acts of the State officers have the 

2 



10 RELATION OF THE STATES 

sanction and support of the majority of the people of 
the State. Within the proper sphere of the State 
Government, the rule of the majority will prevail, ex- 
cept so far as it is restrained by the organic law ; but 
the majority of the voters of the State cannot deprive 
the minority of the rights secured to them by the Con- 
stitution of the United States. Some of these rights 
may be kept in abeyance. Their exercise may be over- 
borne by superior physical force. They may sleep ; but 
it is not the sleep of death. They are integral parts of 
the Constitution, and can only perish when the Consti- 
tution perishes. 

The State of Tennessee, for example, has passed an 
ordinance of " secession." She has allied herself with 
the other seceding States. Her vote of secession is 
sustained by force. Upon this new and startling theory 
of the Constitution, she has already incurred a forfeit- 
ure of all those functions and powers essential to the 
continued existence of the State as a body politic. The 
voice of her eloquent senator is heard in the Capitol ; 
her venerable judge sits in the highest judicial tribunal, 
and exercises the highest functions of Government ; 
lit r re[)resentatives miugle in our councils ; her loyal 
citizens greet with tears of joy th(> banner of our ad- 
vancing hosts, — their hope and our liope, their ])ride 
and our })ride. ^'et, upon this theory, there is no Ten- 
nessee : "the Commonwealtli itself is ])ast and gone." 
Its citizens can no longer be rejjresented in this House 
or the Senate. The courts of the United States are 
closed against them ( ( 'oiporation of" New Orleans rs. 
AN'inter, 1 Wlieaton Ke])., IM). The re([nisition upon 



TO THE UNION. 11 

the State for troops was a mistake. The direct tax was 
a mistake. Its citizens, under the shield of the Consti- 
tution, are outlaws, and in their own homes exiles. If 
such be the effects of a void act of secession, we should 
be grateful we are not called upon to witness the results 
of a valid one. There is nothing in the doctrines of 
nullification or secession more disloyal to the Constitu- 
tion, more fatal to the Union, than this doctrine of 
State suicide. It is the gospel of anarchy, the philoso- 
phy of dissolution. Nor by carrying out this doctrine 
of the destruction or forfeiture of the State organization 
would any thing be gained for the cause of freedom. 
Slavery exists by the local, municipal law ; and would 
not be abolished, unless you go one step further, and 
hold, that, with the loss of the State organization, the 
institutions, laws, and civil relations of the States 
perish. Now, in case of conquest even, though the 
people of the conquered territory change their alle- 
giance, their relations to each other and their rights of 
property remain undisturbed. The modern usage of na- 
tions, which has become law, would be violated if 
private property should be generally confiscated and 
private rights annulled (United States vs. Percheman, 
7 Peters, 51 ; 3 Phillimore, p. 71:3). When, therefore. 
States were reduced to Territories, the National Gov- 
ernment could not abolish slavery therein, except under 
the right of eminent domain and by giving just com- 
pensation. 

If we are right as to the nullity of the acts of seces- 
sion, we may proceed to inquire whether the fact, that 
the seceding States have attempted to form a new alii- 



12 RELATION OF THE STATES 

ance or confederation, will effect the result. Upon 
the plainest letter of the Constitution, as well as by its 
entire spirit, these acts of confederation are void. Con- 
tinuing as States in spite of their ordinances, they were 
expressly forbidden to enter into any treaty, alliance, or 
confederation, or into any agreement or compact, with 
another State or with a foreign power (Constitution, art. 
1, sect. 10). Neither by secession nor confederation have 
they changed their legal relation to the Union and the 
Constitution of the United States. They are still mem- 
bers of the Union, foregoing for a time its i)rivileges, but 
subject to its duties, bound to it by a cord which the 
sword of successful revolution can alone sever. 

"What, then, it may be asked, is the legal character of 
this great insurrection ? The answer is. It is a rebellion 
of citizens of the United States against the Government 
of the United States ; an organized effort to subvert and 
overthrow its authority, and to establish anotlier Gov- 
ernment in its stead. Nothing can be more exi)li(it 
than the proclamation of April 15, 1861 : — 

" 'J'lift laws of lilt' Uniteil States liavo beun for some time past and 
now are opposed, and the execution tlieri'of ol)strueted, in the States 
of South Carolina, (lror;ria, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisi- 
ana, and Texas, liy eomltinaticjiis too ])owerl'ul to he suppressed \>y the 
ordinary course of jutlicial proceedings, or hy the powers vested in 
the nuirslials by law. 

"Now, therefore, J, Abraham Lincoln, rnsidcnt of the I'niti'il 
States, in virtue of the power in me vested l)y tiie Constitution and 
the hnvs, liave tiiought fit to call fortli, and hereby do call forth, the 
militia of thi' several Stales of the I'liion, to the ajji^regato nund)er of 
seventy-live tliousaiid, //( <>r<li r In snjiju-iss saiil innililnnlnnis^ (iinl li> 
cdusr t/ir liiuH to l>r duly r.ntiitiil. 

" I ap|iial to all h'val cili/ens to favor, faeilitate, and aid this 



TO THE UNION. 13 

effort to maintain the honor, the integrity^ and the existence of our 
National Union and the perpetuity of popular Government, and to 
redress wrongs already long enough endured." 

The State organizations have been found convenient, 
and have been used for the purposes of the Rebellion. 
Those of counties and cities have been used for the 
same ends. In either case, it was an entire perversion 
of their functions ; and the action is none the less illegal 
and revolutionary on that account. A State, as such, 
having no power to engage in war with any other State 
or with the United States, cannot interpose its shield 
between the Government of the United States and its 
subjects committing treason by levying war against it ; 
nor is such levying war any the less treason because the 
traitors held places of trust in the State Governments, 
and perverted the functions of those Governments to 
their base ends. Morally, it is an aggravation of the 
offence. It does not change its essential legal character. 

In the Convention for forming the Constitution of the 
United States, Luther Martin, of Maryland, was anxious 
to insert a provision to save the citizens of the States 
from being punishable as traitors to the United States 
when acting expressly in obedience to the authority 
of their own States. The provision offered by him 
was, — 

" That no act or acts done by one or more of the States against 
tlie United States, or by any citizen of any one of the United States, 
under the authority of one or more of the said States, shall be deemed 
treason^ or punished as such ; but, in case of war being levied by one 
or more of the States against the United States, the conduct of each 
party towards the other, and their adherents respectively, shall be 
regulated by the laws of war and of nations." 



14 



RELATION OF THE STATES 



This proposition was rejected, Mr. Martin says "uitli 
much feeling, because the leading members of the Con- 
vention meant to leave the States at the mercy of the 
National Government. The more obvious reason is, 
that it was inconsistent with the whole theory of the 
Constitution, which, springing from the people of the 
United States, acted directly upon them as its subjects, 
and with a force which no law or ordinance of a State 
could impair. 

This, then, is not a conflict of States ; nor is it a war 
of countries or of geographical lines. It is a conflict 
between Government and its disobedient subjects. lie 
only is the enemy of the United States who is commit- 
ting treason by levying war against the United States, 
or giving aid and comfort to those who do. The loyal, 
faithful subject of the United States, wherever on the 
soil of his country he may have his home, is not 
the enemy of his country. No subtilty of logic, no 
ingenuity of legal construction, no misapplication of 
the laws of international war to this contest, can change 
the nature of things ; can convert loyalty into treason, 
or devotion into hostility. If there be to-day in Ten- 
nessee or Georgia, or South Carolina oven, a loyal 
subject of the United States, " faithful among lhi> faith- 
less found," tlie Govcrninont is not at war witli him. 
1 am aware, that, as to ])r()pcrty taken on tlir high seas, 
some of the district courts of the United States have 
licld otherwise ; but I venture to hope, that tlie court 
ot" last resort will afllrm tlu^ doctrine, stated by Mr. .Tus- 
ticc Nelson of thai coiirl, to be i^ood sense and sound 



TO THE UNION. 15 

" On the breaking-out of a war between two nations, the citizens 
or subjects of the respective belligerents are deemed by the law of 
nations to be the enemies of each other.. The same is true, in a quali- 
fied sense, in the case of a civil war arising out of an insurrection or 
rebellion against the mother-government. But, in the latter case, the 
citizens or subjects residing within the insurrectionary district, not 
implicated in the rebellion, but adhering to their allegiance, are not 
enemies, nor to be regai-ded as such. This distinction was constantly 
observed by the English Government in the disturbances in Scotland, 
under the Pretender and his son, in the years 1715 and 1745. It 
modifies the law as it respects the condition of the citizens or sub- 
jects, residing withiu the limits of the revolted district, who remain 
loyal to the Government." 

The difference between a war and a rebellion is clear 
and vital. War is the hostile relation of one nation to 
another, involving all the subjects of both : rebelHon 
is the relation which disloyal subjects hold to the na- 
tion, not involving or impairing the rights of loyal 
subjects. The law may fail to protect obedient subjects ; 
but it never condemns them. As between the Govern- 
ment, and its subjects in arms against it, the legal relation 
is not that of war, notwithstanding the war-power is 
used to subdue and reduce them to obedience. Though 
the Rebellion has assumed gigantic proportions, and the 
civil power is impotent to repress it, the array of num- 
bers, and extent of physical force, do not change its 
essential legal character. It is still treason, — the levy- 
ing of war against the United States by those who owe 
to it allegiance. For this exigency the Constitution has 
provided. The war-power of the Government may be 
evoked " to execute the laws of the Union, and to sup- 
press insurrection." In levying war against the United 
States, the rebels do not cease to be traitors, but are 



16 RELATION OF THE STATES 

doing the thing in Vvhich the Constitution declares trea- 
son to consist (art. 3, sect. 3). 

While using the powers and ap])hances of war for 
the purpose of subduing the Rebellion, we are by no 
means acting without the pale of the Constitution. We 
are using precisely the powers with which the Constitu- 
tion has clothed us for this end. AVe are seeking 
domestic tranquillity by the sword the Constitution has 
placed in our hands. In the path of war, as of peace, 
the Constitution is our guide and our light, the cloud by 
day, the pillar of fire by night. 

While using the powers of war for executing the 
laws and subduing rebellion, we are, of course, bound 
and restrained by the laws of war. It is our duty and 
our privilege to respect the maxims of humanity and 
moderation by which the law of nations and of Chris- 
tian civilization has tempered the spirit of modern 
hostilities. During the war, we may recognize in the 
rebels the ri";hts of belligerents ; mav send tliein flasks 
of tiiico ; may make with them capitulations, cartels for 
exchange of ])risoners ; and extend to them the courte- 
sies which mitigate, to some extent, the iron rigor of 
war. These things were done in the earliest stages 
of our Ke\()lu(ion, not only hcfoi-c tlie sei)aration of tlie 
Colonies was dcdarcd, but before tlie idea of inde- 
pendence had iairly taken ])OSSCssion of the public 
mind. But it was never supposed, that, by adopting 
the usages of civili/ed warfare, (ireat Britain was rclax- 
ini,^ her liold uj)()n the Colonies, or elevating them into 
independent jxiwers. NothinLr is. 1 think, plainer in 
principlo. than tiiat the recognition of these rights and 



TO THE UNION. 17 

the observance of these usages — flagrante hello — can- 
not affect the legal relation of the parties ; does not 
divest the sovereign of his power, or release the subject 
from his duties, when the strife of arms ceases. It is 
only when rebellion has ripened into successful revolu- 
tion, that the permanent legal relations of the parties 
are changed. The recognition of the " belligerent rights" 
of the rebels by foreign powers, can, as between the 
sovereign and his subjects, have no other or further 
effect. Such recognition (if known to the law of na- 
tions) proceeds upon the ground, that the revolution is 
not accomplished, and that the connection is not dissolved. 
Had this been done, the recognition would have been 
of their separate national existence. 

In my humble judgment, Mr. Chairman, the " seceded 
States " (so called), and the people of those States, are 
to-day integral parts of the Union, over whom, when 
the conflict of arms ceases, the Constitution of the 
United States, and the laws made under it, will resume 
their peaceful sway. Traitors may perish ; some insti- 
tutions may perish : the nation will remain ; and the 
States will remain, essential parts of the body politic. 
" The body is one, and hath many members ; and all 
the members of that body, being many, are one body." 

With this brief and imperfect development of the 
principles involved in this great controversy, I proceed 
to a more direct consideration of the subjects of confis- 
cation and emancipation. 

In seeking to know what this Government ought to 
do in relation to the confiscation of private property, or 
the emancipation of slaves, in the "seceding" States, the 

3 



18 CON rise ATION. 

obvious question presenting itself to every mind at 
the threshold is, AVhat is the end which the Government 
and the people are seeking to attain ? There can be 
but one loyal answer to that question. It is to preserve 
the Union and the Constitution in their integrity ; to 
vindicate in every part of this indivisible Republic its 
supreme law. No purpose, however humane, benefi- 
cent, or attractive, can divert our steps from the plain, 
straight path of sworn duty. What is writ is writ. In 
seeking to change it by force of arms, we become the 
rebels we are striving to subdue. 

It is a plain proposition, tliat, in seeking to enforce 
tlic law, we are, as far as possible, to obey the law. 
We are not to destroy in seeking to preserve. The 
people do not desire a bitter and remorseless struggle 
over the dead body of the Constitution. We may raise 
armies and navies, and pour out as water the treasure 
and life-blood of the people ; but we can neither think 
nor act wisely, live well, or die Avell, for the Kcpublic, 
unless we keep clearly and always in view the end of 
all our labors and sacrifices, — the Union of our f;athers, 
and the Constitution, which is its only bond. Xo 
thoughtful man can believe there is a possibility of 
reconstructing tlie Union on any other basis ; or that it 
is within tlie i)ro\ince of Congress, in any otlier l)nt the 
peaceful wav of anuMuhncnt. to make the cii'ort. 

The bills and joint resohitions before the House, ]iro- 
pose, with some differences of ]iolicy and metliod, two 
measures, — tlie coniiscation of tlie ])roperty of the 
rebels, and the ciiKiiicipMtion of their sl,iv(>s. Soin(^ of 
the resolutions propose the abolition of shnery itsell. 



CONFISCATION. 19 

with compensation for loyal masters. It is my duty to 
examine, as briefly as I may, the wisdom, the justice, 
and the constitutionality of the measures proposed. 
And, flrst, of confiscation. 

The propositions for confiscation include the entire 
property of the rebels, real and personal, for life and in 
fee. AVithin the class whose estates are to be confis- 
cated are included not only those personally engaged in 
the Rebellion, in arms against the Government, but 
also those who adhere to them, giving them aid or com- 
fort: so that within the sweep of the bills would be 
brought substantially the property of eleven States and 
six millions of people. 

The mind instinctively shrinks from a proposition 
like this. It relucts to include in one " fell swoop " a 
Avhole people. It asks anxiously, if no consideration is 
to be had for different degrees of guilt ; if the same 
measure is to be meted to those who organized the 
Rebellion and those who have been forced into it ; if no 
consideration is to be given to the fact, that allegiance 
and protection are reciprocal duties; and that, for the 
last ten months, the National Government has found 
itself incapable of giving protection to its loyal subjects 
in the "seceding States," — neither defending them, 
nor giving them arms to defend themselves ; and that, 
deprived of our protection and incapable of resistance, 
they have yielded only to superior force ; if a wise 
Government is to forget the nature of man and the 
influences of birth, of soil, of home, of society, and of 
State, by which his opinions are insensibly moulded ; and 
that this pestilent heresy of the right of secession, fatal 



20 CONFISCATION. 

as it is now seen to be, not only to the existence of good 
government, bnt of social order itself, has been a cardi- 
nal article in the faith of a large portion of the people in 
the Southern States ; and tliat they have been induced, 
by the arts and sophistries and falsehoods of unprin- 
cipled leaders, to believe that tlieir future safety and 
well-being required the exercise of tlie right. Those 
leaders should atone for tlieir crime by the just penalty 
of the law. But you cannot, says Burke, indict " a 
whole ])eople ; " you cannot apply to them the ordinary 
rules of criminal jurisprudence. To state the propo- 
sition to confiscate the property of eleven States is to 
confute it ; is to shock our common sense, and sense of 
justice ; is to forget not only the ties of history and 
of kindred, but those of a common humanity ; is to 
excite the indignation of the civilized world, and to in- 
voke the interposition of all Christian governments. 

It is said that just retaliation requires the confisca- 
tion of the property of the rebels. ])oubtless nations 
may feel compelled to resort to measures of severe 
retaliation ; it may be their only security against future 
outrage: but a firiidy established government does not 
resort to cruelty and injustice because its rebellious 
subjects ]\;i\c done so. It must maintain a liigher 
standard of rectitndi' and jnstice. Its object is, not 
vengeance, bnt to deter men from crime. It knows 
tliat liarsh and scNcre ])unisliments bnt rouse ])itv 
for the criminal, and indignation against the Ciovern- 
ment. 

Nor will lli(> diHerence between confiscation bv the 
reliejs and \>\ this (ioNcrnnient he o\erlool\ed. ()nr 



CONFISCATION. 21 

acts of confiscation, if witliin the limits of the Constitu- 
tion, are effective and permanent : theirs, void in law, 
are temporary in their effect. The title to one square 
inch of land will not be changed by any confiscation by 
the rebel authorities. Every man who has occupied 
the land of a loyal citizen under their pretended acts of 
confiscation will be liable for the full rent and damages 
to the estate. Every man who is in possession of 
personal property under them will be compelled to 
disgorge. Every debt paid under them into rebel trea- 
suries will still be due to the loyal creditor. The resto- 
ration and indemnity will, I know, be imperfect. Many 
grievous wrongs will go unredressed ; but every rebel, 
whatsoever functions he may have usurped, — judicial 
or executive, — who has invaded the rights of person or 
of property of a loyal citizen, will be liable to his last 
farthing for indemnity. So far, therefore, as our Go- 
vernment confiscates the property of rebels to its own 
use, it takes from the loyal citizen the sources to which 
he may justly look for redress. 

The acts of general confiscation proposed would de- 
feat the great end the Government has in view, — the 
restoration of order, union, and obedience to law. They 
would take from the rebels every motive for submission ; 
they would create the strongest possible motives to con- 
tinued resistance. In the maintenance of the Confede- 
rate Government, they might possibly find protection ; 
in the restoration of ours, spoliation. Sj^oliatis anna 
super sunt. You leave them the great weapon of de- 
spair. Sallust said of the old Romans, " Majores iiostri 
religiosissimi mortales nihil victis eripiebant prcEter inju- 



22 CONFISCATION. 

ri;r licentiam," — " Our ancestors, the most religious of 
men, took from the vanquished nothing but the license 
of wrong-doing," — " words," says Grotius, " worthy of 
having been said by a C/hristian." 

It seems to be taken for granted, that our efforts to 
suppress the Rebellion will be successful in })r()])()rtion 
to the severity of the measures we adopt. The assump- 
tion is at war with the lessons of history and with the 
nature of man. The most vigorous prosecution of 
the war possible is best for the Government and its sub- 
jects in arms against it. But the war is means to an 
end. "Wise men labor in the hope of rest, and make 
war for the sake of peace."' It is only when justice is 
tempered with mercy that it is justice. 

Apart from the injustice and impolicy of these acts of 
sweeping confiscation, I have not been able to find in 
the Constitution the requisite authority to pass thc^n. 
There are two aspects in whicli tlie legal question may 
be viewed, — .^V.s7, the confiscation and forfeiture of ])ro- 
perty as the ])unisliment for crime ; secojid/i/, under what 
has popularly been called the " war-])ower " of the 
Government. 

Lookiii<i; at confiscation as tlie ])enalty ol" criine. trea- 
son, or ail} h)\\('i" mrado of oil'oiico, sonio things socm to 
bo pliiiii : — 

That sii(h (orfciture can be created by statutes ap])li- 
cable onl\ to olfoiicos comniitlt'd aft(M' tho'w ])assage. 
('engross cannot pass an * ./• j/o.s/ /'ac/o hn\' (("onstitu- 
ti(Ui, art. 1, sect. D). 

The subject chari^cd witli treason nia\ jnstlv (laini all 
the niiiiiinients and saleii^nards ol tli(> Constitntion. 



CONFISCATION. 23 

He cannot be deprived of life, liberty, or property, 
without due process of law (Amendments, art. 5) ; that 
is, judicial process, as understood from the days of 
Magna Carta. 

He cannot be held to answer for a capital or other- 
wise infamous crime, except in cases arising in the land 
or naval forces, or in the militia when in actual service 
in time of war or public danger, unless on present- 
ment or indictment by a grand jury (ibid.). 

After indictment, he must have a trial by an impartial 
jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall 
have been committed ; which district shall have been 
previously ascertained by law (art. 3, sect. 2 ; Amend- 
ments, art. 6). 

No attainder of treason can work a forfeiture, except 
during the life of the person attainted (Constitution, 
art. 3, sect. 2). By attainder is here clearly meant judi- 
cial attainder ; as a bill of attainder (that is, an act of 
the Legislature) is, by a prior provision of the Constitu- 
tion, expressly forbidden (art. 1, sect. 9). 

These sacred provisions of the Constitution, which, as 
common-law muniments of life, liberty, and property, 
have existed in substance for six centuries, — " the least 
feeling their care, and the greatest not exempted from 
their power," — lie directly in the path, and are fatal 
obstructions to any legislation confiscating property as 
the penalty of treason, except as the result of the judi- 
cial trial and sentence of the offender. 

It has been assumed, — I think, without sufficient re- 
flection, — that, under our laws against treason, the most 
obnoxious traitors even will escape the Tightcous punish- 



24 CONFISCATION. 

ment of their crimes, because they must be tried by a 
jiirv in the State and district wherein the offence shall 
have been committed. Their only escape will be by 
exile. Where war is actually levied against the United 
States, where bodies of men have been actually assem- 
bled to effect by force of arms their treasonable pur- 
poses, all those who perform any part, however minute 
or however remote from the scene of action, and who 
are actually leagued in the general conspiracy, are to be 
considered as traitors (^Kx parte Bolman, &c., 4 Crancli, 
75). We have not, indeed, adopted the law of con- 
structive presence, which holds that a man who incites 
or procures a treasonable act, is, by force of the incite- 
ment or procurement merely, legally present at the act. 
But it may be sufficient to constitute presence, if he is 
in a situation in which he can co-operate with any act of 
hostility, or furnish counsel and assistance to the parties 
if attacked (United States vx. ]5urr. 4 Cranch, 470). 
The modern facilities of communication greatly enlarge 
the field of co-operation. A commander at the end of a 
telegraph-wire, directing the assault upon a fort of the 
United States, or at a railroad station with troops ready 
to be moved to the assistance of the rebel army in 
action, is, in law. ])rcs('iit at the i)\vx\. ads of triMson. 
'i'hc leaders of tliis Ivobcliioii \\\\\ be ibuiul. tlicri'tbre, to 
\\A\v (•oniiiiittcd treason, and to bo li;il)](> to iiidictiiuMit 
and trial in many States and districts in whicli a jur) 
^^ill \)v roadv, ii[ion ade([uate ])r()of, t(^ com ict. 

in llie ])ro])()sed nuMsures. the thing sought to bo 
done is tlio confisfiition of tbc propoilx' of tbo i-olx'l 
as the |)( nait\ of lii^ oUciuc, and tlic attainment ol tliis 



CONFISCATION. ■ 25 

end without the trial and conviction of the offender. 
Though, under the Constitution, upon a trial and conmc- 
tlon of a traitor, you can only take the life estate, these 
measures assume, that, without any trial or conviction, 
you may take the fee-simple. Our legal instincts shrink 
from such a proposition. Its intrinsic difficulties have 
been seen and felt ; and a resort has been had to analo- 
gies and precedents, judicial and legislative, to find for 
it some sanction and support ; I think, without suc- 
cess. 

1. It is true, as has been said, that, under the Consti- 
tution, men may be deprived of life and property without 
trial by jury. Cases arising in the land and naval forces, 
and in the militia when in actual service in time of war 
or public danger, are in terms excepted from the gene- 
ral rule (Amendments, art. 5) ; but the exception, in- 
stead of impairing, by the law of logic as of common 
sense, confirms the rule. 

2. Property is taken for taxes, and certainly without 
trial by jury, where the tax, and mode of assessment, are 
valid ; but this is under an express grant of power to 
Congress " to lay and collect taxes" (art. 1, sect. 8), the 
principle and general method of which were perfectly 
well understood when the Constitution was adopted. 
Nor does the exercise of this power, as has been sug- 
gested, take private property for public use without just 
compensation : on the contrary, the true and just theory 
of taxation is, that the price paid is the reasonable com- 
pensation for the protection and security of life, liberty, 
and property, which a wise and efficient government 
affords. 

4 



26 CO^^FISCATION. 

3. The forfeiture of goods for breach of the revenue- 
laws has slight, if any, analogy to the confiscation of 
property as a punishment for the crime of its owner. 
To Congress is given the power to " regulate com- 
merce," and " to levy and collect imports ; " and, of 
course, to prescribe the terms and conditions upon 
which goods may be imported. It may well avail itself 
of a familiar principle by which property used in violat- 
ing, defeating, or defrauding the law is liable to forfeit- 
ure. Though the forfeiture of the common law did 
not, strictly speaking, attach in rem, but was a part 
or consequence of the judgment of conviction of tlie 
offender, this doctrine was never applied to seizures and 
forfeitures created by statute in rem, and cognizable on 
the revenue side of the exchequer. The thing was then 
primarily considered as the offender, and the offence was 
attached to it. The same principle is applied to pro- 
ceedings in rem, and seizures in the admiralty (2 Whea- 
ton. The Palmyra). It is upon this distinction that the 
statutes of July 19 and of Aug. 6, 1861, find their sup- 
port. The principle is, that the thing used in violating 
the law may be seized and condemned without a judg- 
ment upon tlie L!;uilt of the owner. 

I proceed to in(piirc liow far, if at all. the ])owers of 
Congress are enlarged by the existence of this llebellion, 
and the use of tlie appliances of war to subdue it. 

It would seem to ])e plain, that the resistance of any 
])ortion of the jx-opk' to the Constitution and laws can- 
not operate to confer upon Con^rt'ss any new substan- 
ti\(' power, or to abrou^atc an\ limitations of tiic jxiwers 
of Congress ^\l^K■ll the i^Miplc lia\c imposed. N\ hen 



CONFISCATION. 27 

the Constitution intends that the existence of war or 
rebellion shall put an end to any restriction on the 
power of the Government, it says so : when it does not 
say so, the fair inference is that it does not mean so. 
Examples of such removals of restraint are found in 
article one, section eight, providing that the privilege of 
the " writ of haheas corpus shall not be suspended, un- 
less when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public 
safety may require it ; " and in article three of the 
Amendments, forbidding, in time of peace, the quarter- 
ing of soldiers in any house without the consent of the 
owner, but in time of war permitting it to be done " in 
a manner to be prescribed by law." 

Engaged in suppressing a great and formidable rebel- 
lion, the Government may use the instrumentalities of 
war, so far as they are adapted to the end ; but it is 
never freed from the restraints of the Constitution ; can 
never rise above it. The Constitution is never silent in 
the midst of arms. In war, as in peace, it is the su- 
preme law; itself saJus p)opuU et suprema lex. 

When Government is compelled to use the power of 
war, it observes its limitations. How far, in the use 
of this power, it may confiscate, or subject to forfeiture, 
private property, is the next question before us. 

Some things are tolerably well settled. That property 
used in promoting the rebellion, in levying war against 
the United States, is lawful prize of war. This would 
include the arms, munitions, and provisions of war, in 
actual use or procured for the purpose. The rule ex- 
tends to goods used, not strictly as munitions or imple- 
ments of war, but so as to defeat the military and naval 



28 CONFISCATION. 

operations resorted to to subdue the rebellion : as goods 
on their way to relieve besieged towns or forts ; or ships 
or cargo violating a blockade, or proceeding to or from 
ports with which commercial intercourse has been inter- 
dicted. It may extend to ships and cargo upon the high 
seas, the property of those levying war against the 
United States ; enemies, not because of their domicile or 
residence upon one part rather than another of the ter- 
ritory of the Union, but because they are in arms 
against it. 

Perhaps we should add to these, requisitions or con- 
tributions, within military districts, levied upon those at 
war with the Government, for the support of the invad- 
ing army. Such requisitions were, however, regarded 
by Wellington, a great statesman as well as great com- 
mander, as iniquitous ; as a system for which the 
British soldier was unfit. I would refer also to the ex- 
cellent remarks on this subject by President Woolsey, 
in his admkablc Introduction to " International Law," 
p. 304. 

Beyond the points suggested, it is believed the usages 
of international war do not extend. By the modern 
usages of nations, private ])roperty on the land is ex- 
cnq)t from confiscation. This cxenii)tion, Mr. AN'lioaton 
says (and there is no higher authority), is now held to 
extend " to cases of the absolute and unipialified con- 
quest of tlie enemy's country" (Wheaton's "Elements 
of International Law," p. I'Jl). ^^\; refer also, as 
tending to the same result, to Vattel, book 3, chap. H, 
sect. 147; to 1 Kciits •■ ('oimmM\t;iries/' jtj). lO'i, 104; 
3 IMiillimoiv, p. 110; Woolsey, p. 301. To this iiiiti- 



♦ CONFISCATION. 29 

gated rule of war, there are doubtless exceptions. Of 
these, Mr. Wheaton'says, — 

" The exceptions to these general mitigations of the extreme rights 
of war, considered as a contest of force, all grow out of the same 
original principle of natural law, which authorizes us to use against 
an enemy such a degree of violence, and such only, as may be neces- 
sary to secure the object of hostilities. The same general rule which 
determines how far it is lawful to destroy the persons of ene-mies, will 
serve as a guide in judging how far it is lawful to ravage or lay waste 
their country. If this be necessary in order to accomplish the just 
ends of war, it may be lawfully done ; but not otherwise. Thus, if 
the progress of an enemy cannot be stopped, nor our own frontier 
secured, or if the approaches to a town intended to be attacked can- 
not be made, without laying waste the intermediate territory, the ex- 
treme case may justify a resort to measures not warranted by the 
ordinary purposes of war." — Page 421. 

The exceptions growing out of military exigencies, 
and measured and governed by them, cannot be foreseen 
and provided for by legislation, but must be left, where 
the law of nations leaves them, with the military com- 
mander. 

It has been said that these acts of general confisca- 
tion find support under the provision of tlie Constitution 
which authorizes Congress " to make rules concerning 
captures by land and water^" The Constitution does 
not define the meaning of the word " captures." It 
refers us in such cases to the law of nations, as in others 
to the common law. Congress has power to declare 
" war." What war is, the just causes of war, the rights 
and duties of nations in conducting it, are to be found 
in the law of nations. The " captures " referred to are 
very plainly not seizures of property under legal pro- 
cess, confiscation, or forfeiture, but the taking of enemy's 



30 CONFISCATION. , 

property by force or strategy, jure victorice. The title is 
acquired by capture, and liable to be lost by recapture. 
To make rules concerning " captures " is not to make 
rules in conflict with or beyond the law of nations. The 
extent to which the power conferred by the law of na- 
tions shall be exercised, and the disposition to be had of 
captures when made, are the proper subjects of munici- 
pal law, and of the provision of the Constitution. 

The case of Brown vs. the United States (8 Cranch, 
110) has been cited as expressly deciding that Congress 
has power to pass a confiscation bill. I submit, with 
great respect, that it decides no such thing. The only 
point decided in the case was, that British property 
found in the United States, on land, at the commence- 
ment of international hostilities (war of 1812), could not 
be condemned as enemy's property, without an act of 
Congress for that purpose. The court, dealing with a 
question arising under war with a foreign nation, liad no 
occasion to consider the powers or duties of Congress 
in the case of rebellion. The dlsciis.s'ions of the court 
recognize a distinction between the right of the sove- 
reign to take the persons and confiscate the property of 
the enemy wherever found, and the mitigations of the 
ruh; wliicli the huniane usages of modern tunes liave 
introduced. AN itli all my reverence for the great magis- 
trate who delivered the opinion of the court, I must be 
])crniitted to say, that usage is itself the ])rincipal source 
of the law of nations, and that these humane usages 
liave become the rules of war in Cliristian States. The 
law of nations, sa\s Hx nkcrshock, is only a |)i('suini)tion 
founded on usage (JJi Joro J.( //(t/on/m, chap. IS, sect. G). 



CONFISCATION. 31 

It is suggested, that, if the confiscation of private 
property violated the law of nations, the courts could 
not overrule the interpretation of that law by the politi- 
cal department of the Government, and that no other 
power could intervene. Possibly this may be so ; but 
surely it is not intended that we shall violate the law of 
nations in dealing with our subjects, because there is no 
appeal or redress for the subject. It is in the exercise 
of irresponsible power that the nicest sense of justice, 
and the greatest caution and forbearance, are demanded. 
In suppressing a rebellion so atrocious, marked by such 
fury and hate against a Government felt only in its bless- 
ings, forbearance seems to us weakness, and vengeance 
the noblest of vhtues ; but, in our calmer moments, we 
hear the Divine Voice : " Vengeance is mine ; I will 
repay." 

I conclude what I have to say upon this branch of the 
subject with the remark, that, in substance and effect, 
the bills before the House seek the permanent forfeiture 
and confiscation of property, real and personal, without 
the trial of the off"ender. I am unable to see how, un- 
der the Constitution, that result can be reached. 

The temporary use of property in districts under mili- 
tary occupation, and of estates abandoned by their 
owners, rests upon distinct principles, which it is not 
now necessary to consider. We have only to remark, 
in passing, that the use of such property and the rule 
in such districts can be provisional only, waiting the 
regular action of the State governments, and in no way 
impairing their permanent powers. 

I proceed to the question of the deepest interest in- 



32 EMANCIPATION. 

volved in this discussion, — the emancipation of slaves in 
the "seceding States." There is no subject on which 
our feelings are so likely to warp our judgment ; in 
which calmness is so necessary and so difficult, and 
declamation so easy or so useless. The general princi- 
ples stated in relation to the power and duty of Congress 
as to confiscation are applicable to the subject of eman- 
cipation. 

On the question of policy, the plausible and attractive 
argument is, that the only effectual way to suppress 
rebellion is to remove its cause. The position, when 
thoroughly probed, is, not that the National Government 
has not the power to put down the rebellion without 
resort to emancipation, but that the continued existence 
of slavery is incompatible with the future safety of the 
Republic. This plainly is not a question of present 
military necessity, but one affecting the permanent 
structure of tlie Government, and involving material 
changes in the' Constitution. This can be done in one 
of two ways : in the method the Constitution points out ; 
or by successful revolution on the part of the free 
States, and the entire subjugation of the slave States. 
No man can foresee to-day what policy a severe and 
protracted struggle iitaij render necessary. It is suffi- 
cient to say. that into such a war of conquest and exter- 
mination the people of the United States have no present 
dis])osition to enter. They liave too thorough a convic- 
tion of the capacity of tlie Government to subdue the 
Rebellion by \\\v means \\\v Constitution sanctions, to be 
dcsii'ous (if looking licNond its j);il('. 

l'|ioii llie legal aspect of (lie ([nestion. it may be 



EMANCIPATION. 33 

stated, as a general proposition, that Congress, in time 
of peace, has no power over slavery in the States. By 
that is meant the institution itself; for the National 
Government may, in my judgment, forfeit the right of 
the master in the labor of the slave, as a penalty for 
crime of which the master shall be convicted; and, when 
so forfeited, it may dispose of the right as it sees fit. 
Nor is there any intrinsic difficulty in the use of this spe- 
cies of property under the right of eminent domain. If 
the Government were constructing a fort or digging an 
intrenchment, it might hire this species of labor, or, if 
necessary, take it, as it might other labor or property, 
giving reasonable compensation therefor. 

The provision as to the return of fugitives from ser- 
vice cannot be deemed an exception to the general rule 
before stated ; for the provision applies to escapes from 
one State into another, and not to escapes within the 
State. Of which we may remark, in passing, that, as to 
the former class, the power of the Government is strictly 
civil, to be executed by judicial process ; and that, as to 
the latter, the National Government, in time of war or 
peace, has no concern. 

Nor would an act of the National Government liberat- 
ing the slaves within a State, having the consent of the 
State and providing compensation for the masters, mili- 
tate with the rule. Co)weiitlo vincet legem. The consent 
of the State would relieve the difficulty. 

But the question arises, how far the existence of the 
Rebellion confers upon Congress any new power over 
the relation of master and slave. Strictly speaking, no 
new power is conferred upon any department of the 

5 



34 EMANCIPATION. 

Government by war or rebellion ; but it may have 
powers to be used in those exigencies which are dormant 
iXL time of peace. Such, for example, are the power to 
call out the militia (art. 1, sect. 8), to try by martial law 
cases arising in the militia (Amendments, 5), to sus- 
pend the writ of habeas corjnis (art. 1, sect. 9), to quarter 
troops in private houses (Amendments, 3). But, when 
the National Government is called to the stern duty of 
repressing insurrection or repelling invasion, may not 
new power over the relation of master and slave be 
brought into action^ Such, I think, is the result. 

A plain case is presented by slaves employed in the 
military and naval service of the rebels. If captured, 
they may be set free. 

The Government may refuse to return a slave to a 
master who has been engaged in the Eebellion, or suf- 
fered the slave to be employed in it. 

It may require the services of all persons subject to 
its jurisdiction by residing upon its territory, when the 
exigency arises, to aid in executing the laws, in repress- 
ing insurrection, or repelling invasion. This right is, in 
my judgment, paramount to any claim of the master to 
his labor, under the local law. There might be a ques- 
tion of the duty of the slave to obey; but th(^ will of the 
master could not intervene. I i is claim, if any, would be 
a reasonable compensation for the labor of his slave. 

But, thouL!:h the power may exist, there is, with pru- 
dent and humane men, no desire to use it. Nothing 
but the direst extremity would excuse the use of a 
])o\v('r iVauijlit with so great perils to both races; and 
the recent triunijilis of our arms, (>viiicing our ca[)acity 



EMANCIPATION. 35 

to subdue the Rebellion without departure from the 
usages of civilized warfare, have, I trust, indefinitely 
post^Doned the question. 

There is one other exigency in which the relation of 
master and slave must give way to military necessity. 
If the commander of a military district shall find that 
the slaves within it, by the strength they give to their 
rebellious masters, — by bearing arms, or doing other 
military service, or acting as the servants of those who 
do, — obstruct his efforts to subdue the Rebellion, he 
may deprive the enemy of this force, and may remove 
the obstruction, by giving freedom to the slaves. This, 
it is apparent, is not a civil or legislative, but a strictly 
military right and power, springing from the exigency, 
and measured and limited by it, to be used for the sub- 
duing of the enemy, and for no ulterior purpose. If the 
commander-in-chief and the generals under him shall 
observe faithfully this distinction, the use of the power 
ought to be no just ground of complaint. If, in conse- 
quence of the protraction of the war, the efi"ect of the 
use of this power should be to put an end to slavery in 
any of the States, or to weaken and impair its force, we 
may justly thank God for bringing good out of evil. 

In my judgment, it would be impracticable for the 
Legislature, even if it had the power, to anticipate by 
any general statute the exigencies or prescribe the rules 
for the exercise of this power. The Legislature and the 
people will be content to leave the matter to the sound 
discretion and patriotism of the magistrate selected to 
execute the laws. 

To avoid misconstruction, I desire to say that the 



36 EMANCIPATION, 

power of Congress over slavery in this District is abso- 
lute ; that no limitation exists in the letter or spirit of 
the Constitution or the acts of cession. All that is re- 
quisite for abolishing slavery here is just compensation 
to the master. Equally absolute, in my judgment, is the 
power of Congress over slavery in the Territories. 

Mr. Chairman, in a letter to a friend, published on the 
first day of the last year, I ventured to say that secession 
should be resisted to the last extremity, by force of arms; 
that it cost us seven years of war to secure this Govern- 
ment, and that seven years, if need be, would be 
wisely spent in the struggle to maintain it ; that for 
this country there was no reasonable hope of peace but 
within the pale of the Constitution, and in obedience 
to its mandates. The progress of events has served 
only to deepen those convictions. They are as firmly 
rooted as my trust in God and his providence. Who- 
ever else may falter, I must stand by the Constitution I 
have sworn to support. I am not wise enough to build 
a better. I am not rash enough to experiment upon a 
nation's life. There is, to me, no hope of " one country " 
but in this system of many States and one nation, work- 
ing in their respective spheres as if the Divine llund 
had moulded and set them in motion. To this system 
the integrity of the States is as essential as that of the 
central power. 'I'lioir life is one life. A consolidated 
government for this vast country would be essentially a 
despotic government, democratic in name, but kept 
bu(j\aiit 1)\ coiriiption. and I'llicieiit by the sword. 

Desirincr the e\tiii(tit)ii of ^hncrv \\'\{\\ niv avIioIc mind 
and heart, I watcli the working of events with devout 



EMANCIPATION. 37 

gratitude and with patience. The last year has done the 
work of a generation. By no rash act of ours, much 
less any radical change in the Constitution, shall we 
hasten the desired result. If, in the pursuit of objects 
however humane ; if, beguiled by the flatteries of hope 
or of shallow self-conceit; if, impelled by our hatred 
of treason, and desire of vengeance or retribution ; if, 
seduced by the " insidious wiles of foreign influence," 
we yield to such change, we shall destroy the best hope 
of freeman and slave, and the best hope of humanity 
this side the grave. 



38 



CONFIS CATION. 



May 24, 1862. 



The House having under consideration the bills to confiscate the 
property, and free from servitude the slaves, of rebels, ISIr. Thomas 
said, — 

Mr. Speaker, — Before proceeding to the discussion 
of the measures before the House, I hope I may be 
pardoned for making one or two preliminary sugges- 
tions. At an early (^ay, I expressed my earnest convic- 
tion of the course to be pursued by the Government and 
people of this country in relation to secession ; that it 
was but another and an unmanly form of rebellion, and 
that it must be met at the threshold, and crushed by 
arms ; that after an ordinance of secession, as before, it 
was the duty of the Government to execute in every 
part of this indivisible Republic the Constitution and 
tlic laws. 

1)111 I believed then, and believe now, that the life of 
the States is just as essential a part of this Union as the 
life of the central power; tliat thc^r life is indeed one 
life; and when the gentleman from >ew ^'ork [Mr. 
Sedgwick] yesterday assured the House that the state- 
ment made by me in a i'orincr sjxh-cIi, "that. \\]\vn the 
conflict of arms ceases, the nation will remain, and the 



CONFISCATION. 39 

States will remain essential parts of the body politic," 
" was one of those bold and audacious propositions 
which cannot fail to shock the common sense of man- 
kind," I felt that either he or I had wholly miscon- 
ceived the nature and structure of the Government 
under which we live. E pluribus imum ; Of many 
States, one nation. The Union is not a graveyard for 
the burial of dead commonwealths. The body politic is 
safer with a severed limb than with a dead one. But 
the gentleman from New York has made progress in 
this doctrine of State suicide, and assures the House 
not only of the death of the States, but that the people, 
" by permission of the military power, and not before," 
can form new governments, and seek again admission 
here. Mark the words, " by permission of the military 
power, and not before." Where are we drifting, Mr. 
Speaker ? and what is the end % These are not hasty 
words, but the deliberately uttered language of one, who, 
no less by culture and capacity than by your appoint- 
ment, is a leader of the House. " By permission of the 
military power, and not before." I repeat the question, 
Where are we drifting % What is the end 1 

I was guilty of another audacious act in the view of the 
gentleman from New York. I awoke " St. Paul from 
the dead" to give countenance to my doctrine. The 
gentleman must pardon me, Mr. Speaker. I must be an 
old fogy. It never occurred to me that the Epistles of 
Paul were among the dead things of the past. I sup- 
posed they were the well-springs of immortal life, and, 
like the Gospels, the same to-day, yesterday, and for 
ever. I am bound to presume this was a heedless 



40 CONFISCATION. 

remark ; for I am sure the gentleman can have no sym- 
pathy with the new school of philosophy which has 
outgrown the gospel, and which, making equal war 
with the Christian Church and with the Union, has 
issued the new evangel, in which abstract love of the 
race is substituted for practical love of our neighbor, 
confusion for social order, freedom from restraint for 
the liberty of obedience. But let this pass. 

Mr. Speaker, no man can desire more earnestly than 
I do the suppression of this Rebellion, and the restora- 
tion of order, unity, and peace. But there are two 
things I cannot, I will not do. I will not trample be- 
neath my feet the Constitution I have sworn before God 
to support. I will not violate, even against these rebels, 
the law of nations as recognized and upheld by all 
civilized and Christian States. I believe I must do both 
to vote for these bills, and at the same time do an act 
unwise, and especially adapted to defeat the end in 
view, if that end be the restoration of the Union and 
the salvation of the Republic. 

I propose, very briefly, to examine the bills before 
the House (and especially that as to the confiscation of 
property), under the law of nations and under the Con- 
stitution of the I nited States, and then to say a word 
upon their policy. 

The ])Ositions assumed by the friends of these mea- 
sures are, that we may deal witli those engaged in this 
Rebellion as jmblic enemies and as traitors ; that, re- 
gardiiii,^ tliciii as enemies, we may use against tlieiii all 
the i)owers granted by tin' law ot" nations, and, viewing 
tliciii as rebels or tiailors. we m;iy use against them all 



CONFISCATION. 41 

the powers granted by the Constitution ; and that, in 
either view, these bills can be sustained. 

Dealing with them as public enemies, it is said, that, 
under the existing law of nations, we have a clear right 
to confiscate the entire private property, on the land as 
well as the sea, real and personal, of those in arms, and 
of non-combatants who may in any way give aid 
and comfort to the Rebellion. This first bill sweeps over 
the whole ground. I deny the proposition, Mr. Speaker. 
In the name of that public law whose every humane 
sentiment it violates ; in the name of that civilization 
whose amenities it forgets and whose progress it over- 
looks ; in the name of human nature itself, whose better 
instincts it outrages, I deny it. Such is not the law of 
nations. 

To give a plausible aspect to the proposition, the 
advocates of this bill have gone back to Grotius and to 
Bynkershoek for the rules of war ; and even then have 
omitted to give what Grotius calls the tempeixmienta^ or 
restraints upon the rules. You might as well attempt 
to substitute the code of Moses for the beatitudes of the 
gospel. Any thing can be established by such resort 
to the authorities. By the older writers, you can prove 
not only all the property of the vanquished may be 
taken, but that every prisoner may be put to death. By 
Grotius, I can show that all persons taken in war are 
slaves, and that this is the lot even of all found 
within the enemy's boundaries when the war broke out ; 
that this iron rule applies, not to men only, but to their 
wives and children ; nay, further, that the master has 
over the slaves the power of life and death. — De Jure 



42 CONFISCATION. 

Belli et Pads, book 3, chap. 7, sects. 1,2, and 3. I 
cite a short passage from the chapter referred to : — 

" The effects of this right are unlimited ; so that the master may do 
any thing lawfully to the slave, as Seneca says. There is no suffer- 
ing which may not be inflicted on such slaves Avith impunity ; no act 
which may not in any manner be commanded or extorted : so that 
even cruelty in the masters towards persons of servile condition is 
unpunii^hed, except so far as the civil hiAv imposes limits, and punish- 
ments for cruelty. In all nations alike, says Caius, we may see that 
the masters have the power of life and death over slaves. lie adds 
afterwards, that, by the Roman law, limits were set to this power ; 
that is, on Roman ground. So Donatus in Terence : ' What is not 
lawful from a master to a slave ? ' " 

By Bynkershoek, you may estabhsh that the con- 
queror has over the vanquished the power of Hfe and 
death, and the power of selling them into slavery ; that 
every thing is lawful in war, — the use of poison and the 
destruction of the unarmed and defenceless. — Lcno of 
War, Duponceau s transhition, pp. 2, 18, 19, 20. 

But what then, Mr. Speaker? Does any man sup- 
pose that these writers give us the hxws of war, as 
upheld, sanctioned, and used by the Christian and civil- 
ized States of to-day ? Nothing would be further from 
the fact. Commerce, civilization. Christian culture, have 
tempered and softened the rigor of the ancient rules ; 
and tlie State which should to-day assume to put them 
in practice would be an outcast from the society of na- 
tions. Nay, more : they would combine, and rightfully 
combine, to stay its hand. For the modern law of war, 
you must look to the usages of civilized States, and to 
the publicists who have explained and enforced them. 
Those usages constitute themselves the laws of war. 



CONFISCATION. 43 

In relation to the capture and confiscation of private 
property on the land, I venture to say with great confi- 
dence, and after careful examination, that the result of 
the whole matter has never been better stated than by 
our own great publicist, Mr. Wheaton : — 

" But by the modern usage of nations, which has now acquired 
the force of law, temples of religion, public edifices devoted to civil 
purposes only, monuments of art, and repositories of science, are ex- 
empted from the general operations of war. Private property on land 
is also exempt from confiscation, with the exception of such as may 
become booty in special cases, when taken from enemies in the field 
or in besieged towns, and of military contributions levied upon the 
inhabitants of the hostile territory. This exemption extends even to 
the case of an absolute and unqualified conquest of the enemy's 
country." — Elements of International Laio, p. 421. 

It is not too much to say, that no careful student of 
international law will deny that this passage from Mr. 
Wheaton fairly expresses the modern usage and law 
upon the subject ; but you will permit me to refer for a 
moment to the doctrine stated by my illustrious prede- 
cessor, whose name has been so often invoked in this 
debate, John Quincy Adams. " Our object," he says in 
a letter to the Secretary of State, " is the restoration of 
all the property, including slaves, which, by the usages 
of war among civilized nations, ought not to have been 
taken." "All private property on shore was of that 
description. It was entitled by the laws of war to ex- 
emption from capture." — 3Ir. Adams to the Secretary 
of State, Aug. 22, 1815. 

Again, he says, in a letter to Lord Castlereagh, Feb. 
17,1816,— 

" But as, by the same usages of civilized nations, private property 
is not the subject of lawful capture in war upon the land, it is perfectly 



44: CONFISCATION. 

clear, thfit, in every stipulation, private property shall be respected; 
or tliat, upon the restoration of places during the war, it shall not be 
carried away." — 4 American State Papers,])]). 116, 117, 122, 123. 

A volume might be filled with like citations from 
modern writers. I will content myself with perhaps 
the latest expression, and from a great statesman, a 
native of Massachusetts, and of my own county of 
Worcester : — 

" The prevalence of Christianity and the progress of civili- 
zation have greatly mitigated the severity of the ancient mode of 
prosecuting hostilities. . . . It is a generally received rule of 
modern warfare, — so far, at least, as operations upon land are 
concerned, — that the persons and effects of non-combatants are to be 
respected. The wanton pillage or uncompensated appropriation of 
individual property by an army, even in possession of an enemy's 
country, is against the usage of modern times. Such a proceeding at 
this day would be condemned by the enlightened judgment of the 
world, unless warranted by particular circumstances. Every conside- 
ration which upholds this conduct in regard to a Avar on land favors 
the application of the same rule to the persons and property of citi- 
zens of the belligerents found upon the ocean." — 3L\ Marcy to the 
Count de Sartifjes, July 28, 1856. 

Such I believe to be the settled law and usage of na- 
tions. A careful examination of the arguments made 
on this subject has served but to strengthen and deepen 
this conviction. 

I do not forget, My. Speaker, tliat the case of Brown 
vs. The Tnited States (8 Cranch. 1 lOj lias been often 
referred to in (liis debate as affirmiuij^ tlie contrary rule. 
Tlio ])()ints decided in that case I Uave before stated to 
the House, 'i'lie points, tlie only ])oints, decided were, 
tliat ]3ritish [)roperty found in the I nited States on land 
at the commencement of hostilitic;^ (war of 1812) could 



CONFISCATION. 45 

not be condemned as enemy's property, without an act 
of Congress for that purpose ; and that the declaration 
of war was not sufficient. Gentlemen have referred to 
the obiter dicta, the discussions of the judges, as the 
decision of the court. The distinction is familiar and 
vital, but has been lost sight of in this debate. Only 
the points necessarily involved in the result constitute 
the decision. Let me illustrate the matter by a familiar 
case, — that of Dred Scott. It is the matter outside of 
the decision, what a distinguished jurist has called the 
" slopping-over" of the court, that was so fruitful in mis- 
chief The point decided by the majority of the court 
was, that Dred Scott was not a citizen of Missouri, so 
as to be able to maintain an action in the courts of the 
United States, upon the grounds of such citizenship. 
Under the conflicting decisions in the courts of Mis- 
souri, I have always thought that case might have been 
decided either way, without attracting public attention 
or animadversion. All that was said outside of that 
point has no more legal force than the paper on which 
it was written. Use the sayings of the judges in that 
case, as they have used those in Brown vs. The United 
States, and you can establish the rightful existence of 
slavery in the Territories, the invalidity of the Missouri 
Compromise, and God only knows how many other 
errors in history and law. Treat what is said by the 
majority of the court outside of the point decided as 
argument, — and it is nothing more, — and slavery in the 
Territories is without any legal prop or support. And 
I may say, in passing, Mr. Speaker, there never was, in 
my judgment, a plausible argument even to establish the 



46 CONFISCATION. 

power and right of the master to take his slave into 
the Territories, and hold him in servitude. Slavery 
exists by local law and usage only. It has no extra ter- 
ritorial power. The moment the slave, with the consent 
of the master, is taken beyond the line of the place 
where the law tolerates its existence, the chains fall 
from his limbs. Property in the slave there may be by 
local municipal law, but not by the law of nature and 
of nations ; not by that universal, immutable law of 
which Cicero speaks so divinely in the " Eepublic." INI ay 
I give the Latin, ]\Ir. Speaker ? Kec erlt alia lex ifo- 
mcE, alia Athenis, alia nunc, alia j)osthac ; sed et omnes 
gentes et omni tempore una lex et sempiterna et iinmuta- 
hilis continebit. Nobler thought in nobler words never 
fell from human lips or pen. 

But I return from this digression to say, Mr. Speaker, 
that the distinction sought to be established by the pas- 
sages cited from the discussions in the case of Brown 
vs. The United States, between the law of Mar and tlie 
mitigations of tliat law which the usages of modern 
nations have introduced, has no foundation in principle. 
It is in the usages of civilized and Christian nations 
that we are to seek the law of nations. As the law 
mercliant has p;rown up from the usages of trade and 
commerce, so lias the modern law of nations ixrown up 
from the usages of cnlinlitcncd States. 'I'he ancient 
lt;irl);iroiis rules of war have been tempered and softened 
by commerce, by the arts, by diffused culture, and, more 
than all, by the spirit of the gospel ; and all Christian 
States recogni/e with joy and with obedience the milder 
law. In the jurisprudence of nations, as in our own, 



CONFISCATION. 47 

there is one law felt above all others, — the law of pro- 
gress. Apparently at rest, it is ever silently moving 
onward, quickened, purified, and illumined by the in- 
spiration of that higher law, " whose seat is the bosom 
of God, and its voice the harmony of the world." The 
great, prophetic thought of Pascal may yet be realized : 
Deux lois sujjisent i:)our regler la rqnibUque chreti- 
en?ie, mieux que toiites les lois polltiques, — V amour de 
Dieu, et celui du prochain. 

I do not know that I can more fitly conclude what I 
can say, in the brief time allotted to me, on the capture 
and confiscation of the private property of rebels, 
viewed in the light of international law, than in the 
words of John Marshall, near the close of his judicial 
life : — 

" It may not be unworthy of remark, that it is very unusual, even 
in cases of conquest, for the conqueror to do more than to displace 
the sovereign, and assume dominion over the country. The modern 
usage of nations, which has become law," — 

mark the words, Mr. Speaker, — " the modern usage of 
nations, which has become law," — 

— " would be violated ; that sense of justice and of right, which is ac- 
knowledged and felt by the whole civilized world, would be outraged, — 
if private property should be generally confiscated, and private rights 
annulled. The people change their allegiance ; their relation to their 
ancient sovereign is dissolved : but their relations to each other, and 
their rights of property, remain undisturbed. If this be the modern 
rule, even in cases of conquest, who can doubt its application to the 
case of an amicable cession of territory ? " — United States vs. Per- 
cheman, 7 Peters, 51. 

It is against the light of these considerations and 
authorities, and against the prevailing law and judg- 



48 CONFISCATION. 

ment of the Christian world, that it has been so often 
confidently, I will not say flippantly, asserted on this 
floor, that there could be no doubt of our power, under 
the law of nations, to seize and confiscate the entire 
property of the rebels as public enemies. 

I pass to the second branch of the subject, our 
power, under the Constitution, to pass these bills. It 
has been often said in the course of this debate, and in 
terms without qualification, that the rebels hold to us 
the twofold relation of enemies and traitors, and that 
we may use against them all the appliances of war and 
all the penalties of municipal law. To a certain limit- 
ed extent, the proposition is sound. Treason consists 
in levying war against the- United States. The act 
of treason is an act of war, and you use the powers of 
war to meet and subdue traitors in arms against the 
Government. 

It is also true, that, in the relations between the Gov- 
ernment and its subjects, the rightful power of punish- 
ment does not necessarily cease with the war ; but is it 
also true, that you can exercise both powers at the same 
time "? And is not here the utter fallacy of this whole 
argument I Take an example. You have been accus- 
tomed to exchange flags of truce ; you have recognized, 
to a certain extent, belligerent powers. An oflicer of 
the rebel anuy comes to you under a ihvj; of truce : can 
you take him from under that flai;, and hang him for 
treason? lie stands to you in tlie double relation of 
enemy and frailoi-; but you cannot toucli a hair of his 
head whiK- he is uhiUt that A\liiti> llaij^. Take another 
case. Yon liave stipulated for an exchange of prisoners 



CONFISCATION. 49 

of war. The cartel has been sent, and the prisoner of 
war is on his way to make the exchange. Does any 
man on this floor say that you can take him on his way, 
and try and hang him ? And if not, why not ] The 
plain answer is. Because, having recognized him as under 
the law of nations, while he is subject to its power, he 
is entitled to its protection. 

Pass what bills we may, Mr. Speaker, when the war 
is ended, these questions will come up to be settled. I 
hope I may be pardoned for saying, with great respect, 
to my friends on all sides of the House, that they will 
be as difficult questions as statesmen or jurists were ever 
called upon to decide ; and that it is wise to reserve, as 
far as possible, our judgment. No thoughtful man will 
content himself with the declaration, that belligerent 
" rebels have no rights." Passion may say that; reason, 
never. Passion, sooner or later, subsides, and reason 
re-ascends the judgment-seat ; and these questions must 
be answered there, and to that august tribunal before 
which the conduct of men and nations passes in view, — 
the enlightened opinion of the Christian world. Such 
questions are, how far, flagrante hello (while war was 
raging), with respect to prisoners of war, the civil 
power was restrained ; how far the treating with rebels, 
and exchanging them as prisoners of war, may afi"ect 
their punishment as traitors, either in person or pro- 
perty. I express no opinion, except to say they must be 
calmly met and answered. 

But assuming, for the sake of the argument, that 
during the war even, and while recognizing their belli- 
gerent rights, you may visit upon the rebels the full force 

7 



50 CONFISCATION. 

and weight of the municipal law, I proceed to inquu'e 
w^hether the mode proposed by these bills is in confor- 
mity to the organic and supreme law, the Constitution of 
the United States. I am not to be deterred from the 
discussion by any suggestions from weak or wicked 
men — none other can make them — of leniency to 
rebels, and compassion for traitors. There is but little 
elevation in contempt ; but such suggestions do not rise 
high enough to meet it. They pass by me as the idle 
wind. If a man has no other arrows m his quiver, let 
him use these: I am content. 

The favorite argument, Mr. Speaker, of those who 
claim for Congress the power to confiscate the property 
of traitors without trial by jury is, that the want of this 
power would show a fatal weakness in the Constitu- 
tion, and a lack of wisdom and foresight in its framers. 
They will not believe the Constitution is so weak and 
helpless, so incapable of self-defence. Nothing, in my 
judgment, so shows its majesty and strength ; pray God, 
immortal strength. The powers of war are almost infi- 
nite. The resources of this vast country spring to 
your open hand. All that men have, even their lives, 
are at the service of their country ; and in this great 
conflict how nobly and freely £;:iven ! You can raise an 
army of sevi'u luuKhcd tliousaiid men ; you can give 
tliciii all the best a])])liances of war; you can cover 
your bays and rJAcnvs and seas with your navy ; you can 
blockade a coast of three thousand miles ; you may cut 
down the last rebel on the field of battle. Such is the 
power of war. But, ^Nfr. Speaker, when you shall have 
used all these jjowers, when peace shall have been 



CONFISCATION. 51 

restored, or when the rebels shall come and lay them- 
selves at your feet or be taken captive by your arms, then 
also will the power of that Constitution be made mani- 
fest ; then also will this Government be shown to be the 
most powerful and the noblest on the earth, not because 
the captured rebel is at your mercy, but because he is 
not ; because, under the shield of the Constitution, the 
rebel at your feet is stronger than armies, stronger than 
navies. You cannot touch a hair of his head, or take 
from him a dollar of his property, until you shall have 
tried and condemned him by the judgment of his peers 
and by the law of the land. Does this show the 
weakness of the Constitution, or does it show its tran- 
scendent strength? Are these written constitutions 
established to give to Government power without limit 
over the property, liberty, and life of the citizen ? or are 
they made to define and limit the power of the Govern- 
ment, and to shield and protect the rights of the 
subject 1 

I have always been taught that the people is the 
sovereign ; that these constitutions are carefully defined 
grants from the sovereign power, so framed as to esta- 
blish justice, and at the same time secure the blessings of 
liberty and the protection of law even to the humblest 
and meanest citizen. I know, Mr. Speaker, that these 
are getting to be old-fashioned sentiments. Magna Carta 
is soiled and worm-eaten. The Bill of Rights, the 
muniments of personal freedom, habeas corpus, trial 
by jury, — what are they all worth in comparison with 
this new safeguard of liberty, " the proceeding in rem'' f 

Were you ever at E,unnymede, Mr. Speaker? I 



52 CONFISCATION. 

remember going do"\vn, on a beautiful day in July, from 
Windsor Castle to the plain, and crossing the narrow 
channel of the Thames to that little island, on which, 
more than six centuries ago, in the early gray of morn- 
ing, those sturdy barons wrested from an unwilling king 
the first great charter of English freedom, the germ of 
life of the civil liberty we have to-day. I could hardly 
have been more moved, had I stood in the village and by 
the manger in which was cradled " the son of Mary and 
the Son of God." From the gray of that morning 
streamed the rays, which, uplifting with the hours, cours- 
ing with the years, and keeping pfiace with the centu- 
ries, have encircled the whole earth with the glorious 
light of English liberty, the liberty for which our 
fathers planted these commonwealths in the wilderness ; 
for which they went through the baptism of fire and 
blood in the llevolution ; which they embedded and 
hoped to make immortal in the Constitution ; without 
which the Constitution would not be worth the parch- 
ment on which it was written. 

But I must not linger by the way, Mr. Speaker. 
What do tlicsc bills propose '? The immediate object is 
to confiscate the pio])crty of the rebels. For what end? 
For punishment, is it not? If you strip these men of 
their pr()])erty, it is not because they are innocent; 
although this ])ill docs, in fact, confiscate the ])r()[)erty 
of persons who may be guiltless of any offence : but 
the theory of tlie bill is to ])unish men for tlie crime of 
rebellion, or treason, or give it what name }()u will. 
The bill, indeed, recites, as ;iii ulterior j»iirj)ost\ the 
payment of the exjxMises of the Rebellion, lint there is 



CONFISCATION. 53 

no man on this floor so verdant as to suppose this means 
much. If the courts enforce the statute (I believe they 
will not), how much treasure can you wring from those 
States, poor at the best, but whom the close of this war 
will leave impoverished, seared, and swept as by fire ? 
You might as well pasture your cattle on the Desert of 
Sahara. The land will indeed be left ; but who will be 
your purchasers, when they know they must take at the 
best a doubtful title, but a sure, bitter, and lasting feud? 
The strife and hate growing out of the confiscations of 
the Revolution are scarcely yet appeased ; and it was 
with these confiscations fresh in the memories of the 
framers of the Constitution that the limitation of the 
power of forfeiture was adopted. There never was a 
wilder dream than that of paying the expenses of the 
Rebellion with the fruits of confiscation. 

The real object of the bill is punishment ; the punish- 
ment of an ofl"ence clearly defined in the Constitution, 
of the highest off"ence known to the laws. The punish- 
ment is the forfeiture of the property of the off"ender. 
The forfeiture is to be established before judicial tribu- 
nals, and upon proof of the guilt of the owner. You 
have, then, these three elements; punishment — upon 
proof of the commission of crime — before a judicial 
tribunal. One element is wanting ; one has been dili- 
gently excluded, — trial by jury. Human ingenuity has 
been exhausted to shut the door against it ; and your 
bill is like Hamlet with the Prince of Denmark omit- 
ted by particular request. Here is the plain, impera- 
tive mandate of the Constitution, which he who runs 
may read : — • 



54 CONFISCATION. 

" Tlie trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be 
by jury." — Const., art. 3, sect. 2. 

The property to which the bill applies is not, under 
the laws of nations, prize ; it is not booty ; it is not 
contraband of war ; it is not enforced military contri- 
bution ; it is not property used or employed in the 
war or in resistance to the laws, and therefore clearly 
to be distinguished from that covered by the statute of 
Aug. 6, 1861. It is private property outside of the 
conflict of arms ; forfeited, not because it is the instru- 
ment of offence, but as a penalty for the crime of the 
owner. The disguise of the proceeding in rem is too 
thin and transparent. No lawyer, no man of common 
sense, will be deceived by it. The proceeding, in spirit, 
in substance, and in effect, is the punishment of treason 
by the forfeiture of a man's entire estate, real and per- 
sonal, without trial by jury, and in utter disregard 
of the provision of the Constitution, which limits the 
forfeiture for treason to the life of the person attainted 
(art. 3, sect. 3). 

Was there ever a balder contrivance to get around 
the plainest and most sacred provisions of the Consti- 
tution than this attempt to get a man's farm, his cattle 
and fodder, liis ])lougli, s])ade, and hoe, into a maritime 
court, and try tlicm by the hnv ot" \)v\/.c t AN'ith all 
respect ibr my excellent IViends npon the conunittee, 
sncli a ])i'()])()siti<)n " shocks onr common sense" as well 
as our sense of justice and right. You make the plea 
of necessity, and necessity is the mother of invention ; 
but do you expect to satisfy sensible men, when reason 
resumes its swav, that under a Constitution \vliicli de- 



CONFISCATION. 55 

fines treason to consist in levying war against the United 
States, which will not suffer the traitor to be condemned 
except by the judgment of his peers, and, when con- 
demned, will not forfeit his estate except during his 
life, you can, by this proceeding m rem, without indict- 
ment, without trial by jury, without the proof of two 
witnesses (art. 3, sect. 3), for treason, for the act of 
levying war, deprive him of all his estate, real and per- 
sonal, for life and in fee ? Nay, more ; and that, after 
he has thus been punished, without trial by jury, and 
by the loss of his whole estate, you can, for the same 
act of levying war, try him and hang him ? To sug- 
gest a doubt, whether, after all, this is plain sailing 
under the flag of the Constitution, is to have too nice 
constitutional scruples ! 

I have touched but upon one or two legal objec- 
tions to these bills. Their name is Legion ; but I must 
hasten to a more minute examination of the bills 
themselves. I do not wish to say the bills are hastily 
drawn. If right in principle, defects of form, or want 
of detail, can be supplied. In attemptmg, however, 
legislation involving a new principle, or a new applica- 
tion of a principle, it is a pretty good test to let it be 
run through the machinery of a carefully drawn statute, 
and see how it works. I should have liked to have 
seen that test applied here. 

Looking now to the general features of the confis- 
cation bill, I deske the House to observe that the bill, 
though not in form, is, in substance and effect, retro- 
active. It takes eff"ect from its passage. It applies to 
all acts committed after its passage. As there are whole 



66 CONFISCATION. 

districts, States even, where the law cannot be promul- 
gated, and who will remain in ignorance of its pas- 
sage, the law, as to them, will be ex j^osf facto. They 
will neither know, nor have the means of knowing, of 
the existence of the penalty when the act is commit- 
ted. Will you say it is their own fault? I beg you 
to consider, that since your protection has been lost, 
and until it is restored, there has been and can be no 
really free choice with the individual citizen whom he 
shall obey. What measure of punishment would you 
mete to a citizen of Jacksonville, who, after the with- 
drawal of your army, should yield to " the powers that 
be," though certainly 710 f " ordained of God " ? 

I ask the attention of the House, and a just and 
humane people, if these words shall ever reach them, 
to the wide sweep of this bill. You would infer from 
the arguments of its friends, that the bill was to reach 
only the leaders and instigators of rebellion. IIow, if 
that were so, the limitation and the payment of the 
expenses of rebellion from confiscation would hang 
together, has not been explained. But the fdct is far 
otlicrwise. 

The iirst section inchulcs several classes ; and, lirst, 
all officers of the rebel army or navy, non-commis- 
sioned as well as commissioned. Ollicers of hi^li r;ink 
should 1)0 included ; but there is no sound reason what- 
ever for goinij; down to sergeants and corporals. The 
second, third, and fourth classes embrace persons who 
shall hold certain offices in the Confederate States, or 
anv of them, including judges of the State Courts, and 
in( luhers of State Lejirislatures and conventions. In all 



CONFISCATION. 57 

these cases, the mere holding of the office is made the 
ground of confiscation, without regard to the manner in 
which the duties shall be discharged, or to whether 
those duties involve any active service against the 
National Government ; men, it may he, whom the Re- 
bellion found in office, and who continue in the regular 
exercise of their functions. Here, for example, is the 
judge of probate or surrogate of a county. Rebellion 
breaks out : men will die, and estates must be settled, 
and care had of widows and orphans. To visit this man 
with the confiscation of his estate, for continuing quietly 
to discharge his duties, is equally harsh and absurd. 

The same remark applies, possibly with increased 
force, to persons embraced in the fifth class; those 
holding any office or agency under any of the States of 
the Confederacy, or any of the laws thereof, whether 
such office or agency be State or municipal in its name 
"or character. Every justice of the peace, notary public, 
or town-clerk, treasurer, assessor, constable, overseer of 
the poor, undertaker even, must resign his functions, 
or become a pauper. The result, if successful, is a 
suspension of civil order ; or, on the other hand, the 
severest punishment for a venial off'ence, if it be an 
offence. 

The second section includes all persons who, being 
engaged in rebellion, or aiding and abetting it, shall 
not, within sixty days after proclamation from the Presi- 
dent, desist, and return to their allegiance. Sixty days 
seems to be a reasonable notice ; but, if the parties are 
in such condition that the notice cannot reach them, 
then it is not notice. What may be fairly and justly 



68 



CONFISCATION. 



required is, that men shall return to their allegiance 
the moment they have reasonable assurance of perma- 
nent protection from the National Government. It is 
idle to look for it before such protection is possible. 
To ask a man in the interior of a cotton State to abjure 
the rebel Government and return to his allegiance, in 
the ])rc.sent condition of things, is to ask a moral impos- 
sibility. To confiscate his propert}" for not doing so, is 
itself a crime. 

A word upon another harsh feature of the bill. 
With respect to every person within its scope, and with- 
out the least discrimination as to degrees of guilt, a 
clean sweep of property is made. There is no exemp- 
tion of necessary household furniture, or of provisions, 
or of tools of trade. Nothing is spared ; the bed on 
which the wife sleeps, the cradle of the child, the pork, 
or Hour-barrel. Taken in connection with the fact, that 
the bill declares that the President shall cause the 
seizure to be made, and not merely that he vifn/ ; that 
provision is made for the sale of perishable property, and 
that none is made for the remission, in whole or part, 
of the forfeiture ; and we cannot fail to understand 
the spirit in wliich the bill is conceived, or the impres- 
sion it will not fail to make on the friends of this 
coimtr) abroad. Avho cannot fully ap^jreciate tlie bitter- 
ness which <i\il {oullict engenders; or. if tlioy do, an ill 
not pardon statesincu for yicldiiiu: to its intluence. It is 
])laiii that tlie anujcl of inorcy never found his way to 
the comniittee-rooni ; or. if he ^^ent in with my friend 
from Kentucky [Mr. Mallory | or my friend iVoin New 
Jersey [Mr. Cobb], lu- was politclx bowed out, \\\{\\ the 



CONFISCATION. 59 

assurance that neither rebels, nor those dependent upon 
them, had any rights. 

I ought, however, to add, Mr. Speaker, that, looking 
upon seizure and confiscation as a penalty for crime, 
treason, or rebellion, the President, under his general 
power of pardon, might remit the punishment. But 
then the other conclusion will follow, that, without trial 
by jury, no valid forfeiture can be effected. 

The second bill, for the emancipation of the slaves 
of rebels, is much broader in its scope, including every 
person who shall engage in rebellion, or aid and abet 
it. The insertion of the word " wilfully," lawyers will 
see, does not affect the legal construction. There are 
considerations of humanity in favor of this bill, which 
do not apply to the first ; but it is not restricted to slaves 
used in the Rebellion, and no form of judicial proceed- 
ing is provided. The constitutional objections apply to 
it with at least equal force. 

That the bills before the House are in violation of 
the law of nations and of the Constitution, I cannot — 
I say it with all deference to others — I cannot enter- 
tain a doubt. My path of duty is plain. The duty of 
obedience to that Constitution was never more impera- 
tive than now. I am not disposed to deny, that I have 
for it a superstitious reverence. I have " worshipped 
it from my forefathers." In the school of rigid disci- 
pline by which we were prepared for it ; in the strug- 
gles out of which it was born ; the seven years of bitter 
conflict, and the seven darker years in which that con- 
flict seemed to be fruitless of good ; in the wisdom with 
which it was constructed and first administered and set 



60 CONFISCATION. 

in motion ; in the beneficent Government it has secured 
for more than two generations ; in the blessed influences 
it has exerted upon the cause of freedom and humanity 
the workl over, I cannot fail to recognize the hand of 
a guiding and loving Providence. But not for the 
blessed memories of the past only do I cling to it. He 
must be blinded with excess of light, or with the want 
of it, who does not see, that to this nation, trembling 
on the verge of dissolution, it is the only possible bond 
of unity. With this conviction wrought into the very 
texture of my being, I believe I can appreciate this 
conflict, — can understand the necessity of using all the 
powers given by the Constitution for the suppression of 
this Rebellion. They are, as I believe, and as the pro- 
gress of our arms attests, ample for the purpose. I do 
not, therefore, see the wisdom of violating or impairing 
the Constitution in the eff"ort to save it, or of passing 
from the pestilent heresy of State secession to the 
equally fatal one of State suicide. The fruits of 
the first are anarchy and perpetual border war ; of the 
second, the growth of military power, the loss of 
the centrifugal force of the States, the merging of the 
States in the central Goverument : a Republic in name 
and form ; in substance and cfiect, a desj)otism. 

Mr. Speaker, at a time Ukc this, the individual is 
nothing; the country, every thing. lie cannot truly 
serve or love his country wlio is anxious about liimself. 
lie cannot have a single eye to the welfare of the 
Republic, if both eyes are turned homeward. lie can- 
not kcc]) step to the music of the Union who is grinding 
fantasias lor tlu' villai^c of IJuncombe. One may 



CONFISCATION. 61 

desire, however, not to be wholly misunderstood. It 
has been said that I am opposed to any emancipation 
of the slaves of rebels. Nothing can be further from 
the truth. The first provision for emancipation, — that 
in the statute of Aug. 6, 1861, liberating all slaves 
employed in the Rebellion, — I drew with my own 
hand ; believing now, as then, that it is valid and just. 
For the abolition of slavery in this District, for the 
interdiction of slavery in the Territories, for the new 
article of war forbidding the officers of the army to 
surrender fugitives from service, my votes are on re- 
cord. I voted for the resolution recommended by the 
President for aid to the States in the work of gradual 
emancipation ; though I could not fail to see that it was 
on the verge of authority, and must perhaps finally 
rest, like the purchase of Louisiana, upon general con- 
sent. My views of the power of the Commander-in- 
chief on the subject of emancipation are fully stated 
in remarks submitted to the House on the 10th of April. 
I will not repeat them. They are ample for any emer- 
gency. In the bill I introduced " for the more effectual 
suppression of the Hebellion," but which, in the pre- 
sent temper of the House, I thought it useless to press, 
I have indicated a practical method by which the slaves 
of rebels may be emancipated, as the penalty for crime, 
upon conviction or default of the oifender. But, Mr. 
Speaker, I have kept my eye steadily upon the end for 
which this war is waged, — the only end for which it 
can be justified, — the integrity of the Union. I have 
firmly resisted, and shall continue firmly to resist, every 
effort, open or disguised, to convert this war for the 



62 CONFISCATION. 

Union into a war for emancipation, at the risk — no, 
not at the risk, for the words do not express what I 
mean or feel, with the moral certainty — of defeating 
the purpose for which the war was begun. With these 
convictions, it is scarcely necessary to say, I cordially 
approve the course of President Lincoln in modifying 
the proclamation of General Fremont, and declaring null 
and void the order of General Hunter. For the wisdom 
and patriotism which have thus far marked the course 
of this magistrate, he has my respect and gratitude. 

A word upon the policy and wisdom of these mea- 
sures. A great work has been done by this nation. It 
is easy to find fault. In operations upon so large a 
scale, requiring so many agencies, mistakes and blunders 
Avill be made. But a just criticism, looking upon the 
work as a whole, cannot fail to commend the patriotism 
of the people and the energy of the Government. I 
know it has been prettily said, that we have prosecuted 
this war upon " a rose-water policy." I do not know 
that I fully comprehend what is meant ; but i)robably 
the rebels, in view of that long blockade, witli the fresh 
memories of Port Koyal, Newborn, Pulaski, Donelson, 
Pea Ividge, Shiloh, the Lower ]Mississip])i, and York- 
town, and the ever-tightening folds of the constriction, 
might say with Juliet, the 

" Rose 

15y any other name woultl snu-ll as sweet." 

( )nr armies and navies are victorious. The war sec7nfi 
to be drawing to a (lose. 'Inhere is reasonable ground 
to hoj)r, that, before tli(> next session of Congress, the 
power of the Ivebellion will be broken, and the sword 



CONFISCATION. 63 

have substantially done its work. But I cannot con- 
ceal from myself that our great difficulties lie beyond 
the conflict of arms. It is the part of wise courage to 
look them calmly in the face, to gauge them, and gird 
up our loins to meet them. Action will be needed, 
not words ; judgment, not passion. Unless there be 
calm and fearless statesmanship, your victories will have 
been won in vain ; a statesmanship that honors and 
respects the people, but is willing to abide its sober 
second thought. 

Civil wars, like family feuds, have been fierce, bitter, 
and unrelenting. The bitterness and ferocity mani- 
fested towards us by the rebels cannot but arouse the 
spirit of retaliation, and thirst for vengeance. If we 
yield to the fierce temptation, the war will become one 
of extermination. Thus far, while prosecuting the 
war with vigor, we have shown the moderation and 
humanity becoming a great people. I pray we may 
continue in this course. There is wisdom in the fable 
of the sun and the north wind. There is power in for- 
bearance, in magnanimity, in obedience to the law we 
seek to enforce, in the spirit of forgiveness, in the 
" mercy which seasons justice." Christ knew what is 
in man : the gospel is not a lie. There never was a 
juster war than that which we are waging. It is strictly 
a war of self-defence, the defence of a free and bene- 
ficent Government against traitors in arms against her. 
But we may not forget, that, to those in the Southern 
States who believe in the right of secession, this war 
cannot but wear the aspect of a war of invasion and 
subjugation. This terrible mistake may account for 



64 CONFISCATION. 

their bitterness, though it is no palliation for their 
barbarities. 

Mr. Speaker, upon no subject has there been more or 
looser declamation than on the causes of this liebellion. 
At one moment, we are assured that slavery is the one 
great criminal ; at the next, that it was brought about 
by the fraud, falsehood, and violence of a few unprinci- 
pled leaders. 

Passing this subject noAv with the remark, that masses 
of men are not easily moved, that civil convulsions are 
fed by deeper fires, I ask your attention to two facts 
which seem to be clearly established. The first is, that, 
when the acts of secession were passed, the majority of 
the people of the revolting States, with the exception 
of South Carolina, were loyal to the Union ; and the 
second is, that to-day their feelings are changed, their 
loyalty turned to treason, and love to hate. Passion is 
eloquent ; but do not content yourselves with bitter 
denunciation. Pause, I beseech and adjure you, and 
inquire what is the cause. 

The war brought to their homes and firesides will 
account for much ; but do you not believe that a con- 
viction lias been settling down into the minds of men, 
who at the beginning of our troubles were loyal, that 
these extreme measures ])()iiit to some other end than 
the restoration ol' the I iiioii ^^ith the rights of the 
States preser\('(l; tliul they nuMii subjugation and 
reconstruction '• hy permission of the military power, 
and not bcfori'" ( Once cotninitted to this j)olicy, once 
ailuat on this s(>a of rcNolntion, neither you nor I may 
live to reach the ha\eii of Union and peace. 



CONFISCATION. 65 

If these measures shall be finally adopted, I pray God 
I may prove a false prophet, and that " out of this nettle 
danger we may pluck the flower safety ; " that his 
strength may be manifested in our weakness ; and that 
he may overrule all our errors and shortcomings for the 
good of our beloved country. 



66 



THE TREASURY-NOTE BILL. 



IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, FEB. 6, 1862. 

The House being in Committee of the "Whole on the State of 
the Union, and having under consideration the Treasury-note Bill, 
Mr. Thomas said, — 

Mr. Chairman, — I am anxious to vote for some 
measure for the speedy relief of the Government. I 
have listened with care to the whole debate, v^'ith the 
hope that the difficulties which had occurred to my own 
mind might be relieved. Nay, more : I have diligently 
sought to convince myself that it was in the power of 
Congress to pass this bill, including the provision mak- 
ing the treasury notes legal tender for all public and 
private debts. I have wished to see also that the bill 
could be passed, and tlio good faitli of this Government 
maintained. 1 have failed ujion botli of these points; 
and, with the indulgence of the Committee, will state 
briefly some of the reasons whicli will lead- me to vote 
against the bill as it now stands. 

The question at the threshold of the discussion is 
tliat of" legal |)()\ver, the coiiipelency of Congress to pass 
the hill. Congress has u])oii this subject the ])owers 
given to it hy the Constitution, 'i'liis is a (iovernuient 
of si)e(ific ])()wers. suj)r(Mne in tluMi- spli(n-(>. but the 
sj)her(^ confessedly limited. 



THE TREASURY-NOTE BILL. 67 

We look to the Constitution to see if the power is 
given. We do not say the power is not denied, and 
therefore exists ; but that it is not granted, and there- 
fore does not exist. The powers granted are express or 
impHed, are given in terms, or are the reasonable in- 
ferences from the express grants. Now, it is conceded 
that there is no express power given to Congress to 
make the notes or bills of the Government legal tender. 
There is a power given to Congress upon the subject- 
matter. It has the powder " to coin money, regulate the 
value thereof and of foreign coins." 

These words, " to coin money," have a plain and 
obvious meaning. The only coinage is that of the 
metals, " hard money." To coin money, and regulate 
the value thereof, is to fix its legal value, the value for 
which it is to be received as an equivalent in commerce 
and in discharge of obligations and contracts. This 
constitutional power of coinage was first executed by 
the statute of 1792, and that statute has a provision 
making the coins legal tender ; but there can be no 
doubt, that, whenever money is coined by Government 
under the Constitution, it becomes ijjso facto legal tender. 
But, whether legislation be necessary to carry the provi- 
sion into efi'ect or not, it is too plain for argument, that 
the power to coin money and regulate its value is the 
power to say for what value it shall be received. 

There being no express power in the Constitution 
to make these treasury notes a legal tender, is such a 
power to be reasonably inferred from any of the express 
poAvers? Before answering this question, two things 
are to be observed. 



68 THE TREASURY-NOTE BILL. 

The first is, thcit, there being an express grant of 
power upon this subject of the coining of money and 
fixing its legal value, we should not reasonably expect 
to find an additional power on the same subject given 
by implication. The expression of the one would ordi- 
narily be the exclusion of the other. The second thing 
to be noted is, that it appears by the debates of the 
Constitutional Convention, and by tHe note of Mr. 
Madison, that this subject was before the convention, 
and that a grant of power to emit bills of credit, with 
the apparent purpose of making them legal tender, 
was refused. — Pages 1310-46. 

It is said that the power to make these notes a legal 
tender is a reasonable implication from the power " to 
regulate commerce with foreign nations, among the 
States, and with the Indian tribes." The argument is, 
and it is entitled to consideration, that money is one 
of the great instruments of commerce, as much so as 
the ship ; and that the power to regulate the principal 
thing is the power to regulate its instrumentalities. I 
confess, that, at first, this view of the question impressed 
me. But furtlicr reflection has satisfied me it is not 
soiiiul. If" tlie Constitution were otherwise silent upon 
tlic subject, th(> implication would doubtless be a strong 
one. 

But tlie Constitution lias s))ok(Mi ; lias iiidicatcnl what 
shall be nioucN under its provisions, and the i)o\\er of 
Congress oxcv it. 

Again: the ])ractic;il construction of the Constitution 
has been, tluit no such power existed. 'I'liough the exi- 
gencies of the (iovernnicut have heretofore been great, 



THE TREASURY-NOTE BILL. 69 

the experiment has never been tried ; nor, so far as I 
know, ever before suggested. 

Of the three great statesmen whose minds have been 
given to this subject of the currency, and the power of 
the National Government over it, no one has asserted 
the existence of this power. Mr. Madison and Mr. 
Webster have expressly denied its existence. Mr. Web- 
ster had, of all our statesmen, except perhaps Mr. 
Hamilton, the strongest convictions of the necessity of 
a national currency, and of the duty of Congress to con- 
trol it ; but, on the want of power in Congress to make 
any thing but coin legal tender, his language is clear, 
firm, and unequivocal. He says, — 

" But if we understand by currency the legal money of the country, 
and that which constitutes a legal tender for debts, and is the statute 
measure of value, then, undoubtedly, nothing is included but gold and 
silver. Host unquestionably, there is no legal tender, and there can he 
no legal tender, in this country, under the authority of this Government 
or any other, but gold and silver, either the coinage of our own mints, or 
foreign coins at rates regulated by Congress. This is a constitutional 
principle, perfectly plain, and of the very highest importance. The 
States are expressly prohibited from making any thing but gold and 
silver a tender in payment of debts ; and although no such express 
prohibition is applied to Congress, yet, as Congress has no power 
granted to it in this respect but to coin money and to regulate the 
value of foreign coins, it clearly has no power to substitute paper or 
any thing else for coin as a tender in payment of debts and in discharge 
of contracts. Congress has exercised this power fully in both its 
branches. It has coined money, and still coins it ; it has regulated the 
value of foreign coins, and still regulates their value. The legal ten- 
der, therefore, the constitutional standard of value, is established, and 
cannot be overthrown. To overthrotv it would shake the whole system. 

" But, if the Constitution knows only gold and silver as a legal ten- 
der, does it follow that the Constitution cannot tolerate the voluntary 
circulation of bank-notes, convertible into gold and silver at the will 



70 THE TREASURY-NOTE BILL. 

of the holder, as part of the actual money of the country ? Is a man 
not only to be entitled to demand gold and silver for every debt, but 
is he, or should he be, obliged to demand it in all cases ? Is it, or 
should Government make it, unlawful to receive pay in any thing 
else ? Such a notion is too absurd to be seriously treated. The 
constitutional tender is the thing to be preserved ; and it ought to be 
preserved sacredly, under all circumstances. — Webster's Works.^ vol. iv. 
p. 271. 

Again he says, — 

" I am certainly of opinion, then, that gold and silver, at rates 
fixed by Congress, constitute the legal standard of value in this coun- 
try ; and that neither Congress nor any State lias authority to establish 
any other standard or to displace this." — Ibid., vol. iv. p. 280. 

This is good law and solid sense. 

There is, Mr. Chairman, another difficulty in inferring 
from the power of Congress to regulate commerce the 
power to make treasury notes legal tender, which has 
not been adverted to. It is this : The power given to 
Congress is to regulate commerce " amoug the States." 
Now, it is clear in principle, and well settled as autliority, 
that the provision does not extend to and inchide the 
internal commerce of the States. Tliis i)ower is reserved 
to tlie States themselves (Gibbons r.v. Ogden, I'J Whea- 
ton, 1). Looking at this power to make these notes a 
legal tender as incident to the power of Congress to 
regulate commerce, the power of the incident cannot 
extend beyond the ])Ower of tlic principal. Tbis bill 
clearly includes ;i coiiimcice o\er which wc have no 
control. It is scarcely necessary to say that this internal 
commerce would include nine out of ten of ;ill th(> bar- 
gains that are made. 

It has been said, that, under the power to " borrow 



THE TREASURY-NOTE BILL. 71 

money on the credit of the United States," we have the 
power to make the securities given for borrowed money 
legal tender ; that is to say, under the power to horrow^ 
we have the power to create. 

It would seem to be a sufficient answer to this posi- 
tion to say, that, if the Government had the power to 
make its notes money by its superscription only, there 
would be no great need to borrow. 

It has been argued, that because the power is denied 
to the States to make " any thing but gold and silver a 
tender in payment of debts," and is not denied in terms 
to Congress, it therefore exists in Congress. To this 
position the answer is twofold : Fkst, that the express 
power has been given to Congress of coining money., 
and regulating its value ; the value for which it is to 
be received in the marts of commerce in the payment of 
debts or the measure of damages. The money so 
coined is the only money known to the Constitution. 
The Constitution never confounds, as does this bill, 
money with the promise to pay money, the shadow with 
the substance, the sign with the thing signified. The 
second and obvious answer is, that the power, not 
being delegated to Congress, is reserved, under article 
ten of the iVmendments, to the people. The people, 
acting in the light of their own terrible experience, 
would neither give the power to Congress, nor permit its 
exercise by the States. If the power to make money of 
paper is an attribute of sovereignty, as the friends 
of this bill aver, the attribute yet rests securely in the 
bosom of the sovereign. The people have not parted 
with this power of evil. 



72 THE TREASURY-NOTE BILL. 

Mr. Chairman, though the legal question has not 
been judicially settled, I feel compelled to say that the 
weight of reasoning and authority is strongly against 
the validity of the clause making the treasury notes 
legal tender. If the validity of the provision be doubt- 
ful even, and it becomes, as it inevitably would, the 
subject of contest and litigation in the courts, the effect 
upon the credit of the paper will, in my judgment, 
be worse than if the tender clause had been wholly 
omitted. 

I have a word or two to say upon the justice of this 
clause of the bill. 

To make these notes legal tender for debts, private 
and public, contracted before the passage of the bill, 
seems to me a clear breach of good faith. Debts are 
obligations or promises to pay money, the only money 
known to the Constitution and laws ; the universal equi- 
valent having not merely intrinsic value, but being the 
measure and standard of value. Paper is not money. 
The draft, bill, or note, is the mere sif/n : money is the 
ihi/tfj sl</nifi('(l. Said Jolin Locke, " ]\Ien in their bar- 
gains contract, not for denominations or sounds, but for 
the htfrljisic rd/nr." 

This bill, Mr. Chairman, changes the condition and 
practically impairs the obliji^ation of every existing con- 
tract to i)ay Tiioiicy. \\'1umi tiio contract to pay money 
matures, this l)ill compels {]ic creditor to take for his 
debt, not money, not even ])aper convertible into money 
on demand, but the ])roiHise of (iovernment to pay at a 
future day uncertain. It is a perfect answer of the 
creditor to this proposition to say, " That is not my 



THE TREASURY-NOTE BILL. 73 

agreement : a matured debt is not paid by a promise 
to pay." 

But further : the faith of the contract is broken, be- 
cause the creditor is not paid in gold or silver, nor in 
that which is equivalent to gold and silver. He neither 
gets the coin, nor its value in any form ; the money, nor 
the money's worth. Take, for example, one of the 
treasury notes issued under the act of July 17, payable 
in three years, with interest at the rate of seven and 
three-tenths per cent semi-annually. When the interest 
is due, the Government is asked to pay. It offers its 
note convertible into stock worth now eighty-eight cents 
on the dollar. The holder of the note reads the ninth 
section of the statute of July : — 

" And he it further enacted, That the faith of the United States is 
hereby solemnly pledged for the payment of the interest, and redemp- 
tion of the principal, of the loan authorized by this act." 

If the lender had understood that by payment of 
interest was meant the giving another note, payable at 
the pleasure of the Government, would the loan have 
been effected ? When, by compulsion, he takes your 
note, and converts it into stock, worth, it may be, eighty- 
eight or seventy-five cents on a dollar, will he go away 
with the conviction, that the faith of the United States, 
so solemnly pledged, has been as solemnly redeemed ? 
Will he not feel that faith without works is dead ? No 
craft of logic or of rhetoric can disguise the real nature 
of that transaction. If we feel stain like a wound, that 
wound is immedicable. Take from us, Mr. Chairman, 
our property, houses, and lands, — they cannot be de- 

10 



74 THE TREASURY-NOTE BILL. 

voted to a nobler cause : but, in God's name, leave us 
the consciousness of integrity ; leave us our self-respect. 
Delays may be inevitable ; but we will pay the uttermost 
farthing. 

If the provision of the bill be not just, it is, of course, 
impolitic. It will wound our credit vitally. It will 
defeat the very end it was designed to accomplish. 
That credit can only be maintained as individuals or 
as a nation by the utmost fidelity to our engagements ; 
by keeping our promises as we keep our oaths, — regis- 
tered in heaven. 

No matter wliat may be the resources of the country ; 
no matter what may be its actual wealth, or its capacity 
to acquire it : your creditor has no lien upon your pro- 
perty, lie can make no levy upon your lands or goods. 
If you refuse or fail to pay, he is without remedy. 
After all, his sole reliance must be upon your good 
faith. In the keeping of that is his security and your 
credit. And you cannot afford the experiment of giving 
him ])ai)cr wlien you promised him money. It will cost 
you, in the long-run, even more than it will cost him. 

This provision of the bill, in the nature of a forced 
loan, is itself a confession of weakness. It seeks to 
compel credit for the reason that it does not come spon- 
t;iii(M)iisly. It ;issimi('s that force is necessary to uphold 
that wliich iiiiist stand on its own legs, or cannot stand 
at all. ( Vc(nt is fiiitli, is trnst. is conlidcnco. If you 
faithfully kce|> \our proniisos ; if" 1)\ taxation ym a^ail 
yourselves of all tho resources of tiie country lor the 
salvation of the conntiN ; if you keep always in \ ieu' 
(he iiid i'or which tliis conllict is waged ; il', in seek- 



THE TREASURY-NOTE BILL. 75 

ing to enforce the Constitution and the laws, you 
show a readiness yourselves to obey the Constitution 
and the laws, you will win credit : you cannot com- 
mand or enforce it. It will follow in the footsteps 
of rectitude : you cannot drive it before you. You 
may by this bill say that paper is money; give the 
same name to things vitally different. The essential 
difference will be none the less clearly perceived and 
strongly felt. It is no want of respect to say to you, 
You cannot change the nature of things. 

The friends of this feature of the bill, Mr. Chair- 
man, admit the reluctance with which they assent to it. 
The only ground of defence is its necessity ; that no 
alternative is left to us. I respect their motives : I can- 
not see the necessity. 

We have spent a great deal of money in this war, 
and have wasted a great deal. But we are not impov- 
erished. "What we have spent is trivial in comparison 
to what is left. The amount up to this time will not 
exceed two years of surplus profits. It is not more than 
one thirty-second part of our whole property. Not a 
dollar of tax has been raised ; and yet we are talking of 
national bankruptcy, and launching upon a paper cur- 
rency. I may be very dull ; but I cannot see the neces- 
sity or the wisdom of such a course. 

Gentlemen who appreciate the perils of this step 
would relieve themselves and us by the assurance, that 
the amount of paper to be issued is restricted within 
safe bounds. These barriers are easily surmounted. It 
is the first step which costs. The descent has always 
been easy. The difficulty is return. The experience 



76 THE TREASURY-NOTE BILL. 

of mankind shows the danger in entering upon this 
path ; that boundaries are lixcd only to be overrun, 
promises made only to be broken. Human nature re- 
mains essentially the same. We are neither wiser nor 
better than our fathers. The theatre changes, but not 
the actors or the drama. In speaking of emissions of 
paper-money, Hamilton, the greatest of our statesmen, 
and the most sagacious of our financiers, says, — 

" The -wisdom of the Government will be shown in never trusting 
itself with the use of so seducing and dangerous an expedient. la 
times of tranquillity, it might have no ill consequence ; it might even 
perhaps be managed in a way to be productive of good : but, in 
great and trying emergencies, there is almost a moral certainty of its 
becoming mischievous. The stamping of paper is an operation so 
much easier than the laying of taxes, that a government in the practice 
of paper emissions Avould rarely fail, in any such emergency, to 
indulge itself too far in the employment of that resource, to avoid, 
as much as possible, one less auspicious to present popularity," — 
ITiDiuUon's WorJcs, vol. iii. p. 124. 

The ordinary check, the only effectual check, in the 
issue of pa])er for currency, the security of the ])ublic 
against excess in its issue, is tliat the excess will be 
returned u})on tlie banks for gold and silver. A certain 
amount is needed for the purposes of the currency. 
When that point is reached, the paper ben:ins to decline, 
tlie gold and sihcr are demanded, and the issues of 
pai)cr are contracted. li' there be an excess of gold 
and sil\('r, it n ill right itself by exportation, or find its 
way into the arts. To the issue of this paper there is 
no natural check or restraint. When it begins to dejjre- 
ciate, the necessity is at once created for increasing the 
issues ; public distrust is increased ; and this again leads 



THE TREASURY-NOTE BILL. 77 

to still further depreciation and to still larger issues. 
The process of decline is easy, natural, inevitable. 

The results are the familiar things of history : prices 
expand ; " new ways to pay old debts " are opened ; 
the hearts of men glow as with new wine. But all is 
unreal : not a farthing is added to the substantial 
wealth of the country. The seeming prosperity, " hav- 
ing no root in itself, abides but for a time." The con- 
traction and depression are as rapid and as great as 
were the rise and exaltation ; and men come down from 
the cloud-land to mourn over blighted hopes and broken 
promises and wasted fortunes, and to feel soberly that 
the laws of nature and of Providence are stronger than 
the laws or the hopes of men. 

One thing to be noted is, that the heaviest share of 
the burden always falls upon labor. Never were wiser 
words than those of Mr. Webster : " Of all contri- 
vances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, 
none has been more effectual than that which deluded 
them with paper-money. Ordinary tyranny, oppression, 
excessive taxation, — these bear lightly on the Tnass of 
the community, compared with fraudulent currencies and 
the robberies committed by depreciated paper." 

A word, Mr. Chairman, and I will relieve the patience 
of the Committee. It has been said that coming gene- 
rations ought to bear a large part of the expenses of 
this war, and that we may therefore justly create a large 
pubHc debt. A debt will doubtless be created ; but the 
burdens of the war ought, as far as possible, to fall 
upon the men of this generation. We are but keep- 
ing in repair the structure of our fathers, not building 



78 THE TREASURY-NOTE BILL. 

a new one. This expense should be borne mainly by 
the tenants for life, and not by the heirs. For the 
discharge of this duty, we need four things: unity of 
purpose, energy of action, the largest possible taxation, 
and the severest possible retrenchment. 



79 



RECOGNITION OF LIBERIA AND HAYTI. 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JUNE 3, 1862. 

Mr. Speaker, — After the excellent speech of my 
friend and colleague who introduced this bill [Mr. 
Gooch], any thing like elaborate argument is unneces- 
sary ; but I desire to state very briefly the reasons which 
will induce me to vote for it, and especially for that 
portion of it which recognizes the independence and 
establishes diplomatic relations with the Republic of 
Liberia. My interest in this State of Liberia was an 
early and strong one. Whether we look at its past his- 
tory or at its probable future destiny, it is among the 
most interesting of modern States. The Government 
and people of this country sustain to it a near and inti- 
mate relation. It was planted by our care. It is the 
fruit of the labors, the sacrifices, and the prayers of wise 
and good men among us. Its existence is a slight 
atonement for the cruelty, the perfidy, the injustice, 
which by us, as by other Christian States, have been 
lavished on the continent of Africa, the land of God's 
sunshine and of man's hate. It is the outpost of her 
civilization ; the opened gateway through which the arts 
of peace, social order and Christianity, may enter, and 
gain a permanent foothold. 



80 RECOGNITION OF LIBERIA AND IIAYTI. 

That Liberia is of sufficient commercial importance 
to justify the institution of diplomatic relations with 
her, has been clearly shown. Every year will develop, 
quicken, and enlarge this commerce, if we choose to 
watch over and protect it. Our interests lie in the path 
of our duty. 

I am not prepared, Mr. Speaker, to say that the 
recognition of an independent State, although it may 
have sufficient power to maintain both commercial and 
political relations with us, is a matter of absolute duty 
under the law of nations. It is, perhaps, what moral 
writers would call a duty of imperfect obligation. But 
in respect to this colony, and to the men who have 
gone out from this country to plant and train it up, there 
has been from the bei^innin«: an assurance of the assist- 
ance, the counsel, and the protection of this Govern- 
ment ; and the recognition on our part is required by 
good faith as well as sound policy. Other nations have 
preceded us in the recognition. It was our duty and 
privilege to have been first. 

If there were no elements entering into the discussion 
of this question but the relations which the lve[)ublic of 
liiberia holds to-day to the rest of the civilized world, 
the iini)ortaii(e of its commerce, of its cai);i(ity to luaiu- 
tain, as it lias for years maintained, an iii(le[)eiident 
GoveniMU'iit, witli the fact that two of the most ])ower- 
ful nations of tlic v;\y\\\ liave already recognized its 
independence, there would have been no discussion of 
this bill. 'J'he only gronnd of objection is. that that 
State has been [>l;uitc(i and built up b\ an inferior race 
oi luen. 



RECOGNITION OF LIBERIA AND HAYTI. 81 

I have no desire to enter into the question of the 
relative capacity of races ; but, if the inferiority of the 
African race were established, the inference as to our 
duty would be very plain. If this colony has been built 
up by an inferior race of men, it has a yet stronger 
claim on our countenance, recognition, and, if need be, 
protection. The instincts of the human mind and heart 
concur with the policy of men and governments to help 
and protect the weak. To a child or to a woman I am 
to show a degree of forbearance, kindness, gentleness 
even, which I am not necessarily to extend to my equal. 

But, sir, this colony is founded by black men, and not 
by white. If my friend from Ohio [Mr. Cox] had intro- 
duced a resolution that all commerce should be inter- 
dicted with the " Black Sea," I should not have been 
more surprised. I am not aware that the law of nations 
or the comity of nations recognizes the distinction be- 
tween black and white men ; and it is rather late to 
attempt to ingraft it upon the code. 

Upon the question of admission to the society of 
nations, the law looks to the capacity of the State to 
maintain self-government, its capacity for political and 
commercial relations, and its general conformity to the 
usages and manners of civilized States. 

Mr. Cox. I ask my friend from Massachusetts, 
whether the law of nations does not apply now, without 
this recognition of Liberia and Hayti ; and whether we 
can make the law of nations apply by passing this act 
of Congress. 

Mr. Thomas. I will answer the question with plea- 
sure. If, within the rules of the law of nations, the 

11 



82 RECOGNITION OF LIBERIA AND HAYTI. 

States of Liberia and Ilayti arc now independent 
powers, then it is plain, that, by this resolution, we re- 
cognize only an existing status or fact. I do understand, 
Mr. Speaker, that the Republics of Liberia and Hayti 
to-day belong to the society of States: but what we 
have to pass upon now is, whether this nation will affirm 
their admission, and hold with them commercial and 
diplomatic relations ; and, if so, to what extent ? If the 
position of my friend from Ohio be right, as I dare say. 
it is, that they are already independent States, then we 
are doing no harm, surely, in recognizing and confirm- 
ing what other nations have done. 

But the precise question is, whether we can fairly 
regard the fact of the color of the race by which the 
State has been built up and maintained in deciding this 
matter. My position is, that by no just application of 
the principles of international law can that distinction 
be made. Nor is the question before us a question of 
taste, much less of narrow prejudice. The question, 
whether a minister from a foreign State is to be received, 
is to be determined on higher grounds. Personal objec- 
tions are sometimes interposed. Nations decline to 
receive as ministers persons whose residence would, by 
the laws or usages of the country, be inadmissible ; but 
I am not aware of rejection from the hue of tlie skin. 

President Roberts, of the Republic of liihcria, was 
liere some years ago. Many gentk'iiu'u will recollect 
him. No man who had seen liiiii and conversed with 
liim, or who knew any thing of his character, would for 
a moment object to his appearing here as a minister of 
that republic to this Government. Such a man would 



RECOGNITION OF LIBERIA AND HAYTI. 83 

not infect even the lyure air of the capital, nor would he 
be much cowed by the presence of a superior race ! 

But, as I have before said, Mr. Speaker, this is not a 
question of taste. It is a question of the fair applica- 
tion of the principles of international comity ; it is a 
question, whether this people have so built up a State 
as to have a fair claim to the recognition of this Gov- 
ernment. 

It is said, Mr. Speaker, that if we al'e to make this 
recognition, and to establish these relations, this is not 
the proper time to do so. Why not the proper time ? 
This State has been in a condition to maintain these 
relations with us for a number of years. But a portion 
of the representation of this country is absent! Not 
by our fault, Mr. Speaker. Congress is not to cease to 
exercise the functions of legislation because men or 
States are not here to attend to the public interests. 
If they choose to forego their privileges, we must, never- 
theless, discharge our duties. If a few of our friends 
here should absent themselves from our discussions, we 
should not consider ourselves under any obligation what- 
ever, on that account, to give up the ordinary work of 
legislation. I cannot be influenced by the consideration, 
that States have neglected the duty imposed upon them 
by the Constitution. We are to determine this question 
upon the same considerations and from the same 
motives as if this Rebellion had not occurred. 

Mr. Speaker, so far from being deterred from this 
recognition by this question of race, I would make this 
recognition the sooner because it was some measure of 
atonement to a grossly wronged and injured race. While 



84 RECOGNITION OF LIBERIA AND HAYTI. 

I am ready on every occasion, in this House and else- 
where, to recognize and affirm the rightful power of tlie 
States over their domestic institutions, I am not to con- 
ceal from myself the fact, that, from the beginning of 
the history of the country to this hour, our course as a 
people towards that race has been one of cruelty and 
injustice.' 

There are two things in this country which art often 
confounded, but which are not very nearly akin, — 
hatred of the slaveholder, and love of the slave ; ab- 
stract love of the race, and practical love of the men 
who compose it. I frankly confess, Mr. Speaker, that 
I have never been more grieved on this floor, than 
when I saw gentlemen, who during the whole winter 
have been ventilating their rhetoric on the wrongs of 
slavery and of the race subject to its iron rule, deliber- 
ately record their votes against extending to a man of 
color, whatever his capacity or ability or fidelity, the 
power or right to serve the Government, even in 
the humble capacity of carrying the mail on his shoul- 
ders, or on horseback, if he could make a horse contract, 
lihctoric is beautiful ; but it is not meat or bread or 
raiment, or the right to work for meat or bread or rai- 
ment. 

'I'iiis by the way. It cannot escape observation, Mr. 
Speaker, that our relations witli the States of .Liberia 
and Ilayti may soon assume new importance. As the 
result of the legislation of the last session, and as 
the /Ki/iifd/, till cUdbIc result of this war, the nuuiher of 
free persons of color in this country will be greatly in- 
creased. The l"'ree Statics aro barring their doors against 



RECOGNITION OF LIBERIA AND HAYTI. 85 

them. Abstract love is simpler and easier than practi- 
cal. They may feel the necessity of going out from the 
house of political and social bondage. The doors of 
Liberia and Hayti are open to receive them. Our sym- 
pathy, our aid, our protection, ought to go with them ; 
and intimate political and commercial relations will be 
essential for those ends. 

A gentle hint, and I will trespass no longer on the 
time and courtesy of my colleague, who is to close 
the debate. Much has been said, justly said, on this 
floor, of men of one idea. One idea does not make a 
statesman, more than one swallow makes a summer. 
We do not admire the spring that can fill but one 
bucket, the mill that will grind but one grist, the quiver 
with one arrow, the hen with one chicken. Again : one 
idea or feeling may be so strong as to give color to all 
the rest. That idea or feeling may be ardent aversion 
to the negro race, as well as ardent love for it. In shun- 
ning Scylla, we may touch Charybdis. 



86 



DEATH OF HON. GOLDS^^IITH F. BAILEY. 



HOUSE OF REPRESEXTATIVKS, MAY 15, 1862. 

My colleagues, Mr. Speaker, have assigned to me the 
duty of announcing to the House the death of one of our 
number — lion. Goldsmith F. Bailey, at his home in 
Fitchburg, Mass. — on the 8th instant. 

The story of his life is a brief and manly one. He 
was bom on the 17th of July, 1823, in Westmoreland, 
N.II. ; a State that has given to her sisters so many 
of her jewels, and yet always kept her casket full and 
sparkling. An orphan at the age of two, he was tlirown 
wliollv upon his own resources at the ai^c of twelve. 
What we ordinarily call education (schooling) was 
finished substantially at the ivj^c of sixteen. But lie 
early discovered that the only true culture is self-cult urc ; 
the only true development, self-development ; that in tlie 
sweat of a man's own face lie must eat tlie Ijrcad ol 
knowledge; and lliat in the school of narrow fortune 
and of early stnigi^le are often to be found the most 
invigorating (lis(ii)lines and the wisest t(\i(h(M-s. 

At the age of sixteen, lie began to learn the ail of 
])rinting. We need but glance at our liistory, or look 
around us at cither end of the ('ai)itol. to leani, that as 



DEATH OF HON. GOLDSMITH F. BAILEY. 87 

printing is the most encyclopedic of arts, so the printing- 
office is among the best places of instruction. In diffus- 
ing knowledge, the pupil acquires it ; and, in preparing 
the instruments for educating others, educates himself. 
I have revered the art from my forefathers, as Paul 
Avould have said ; and mine, therefore, may be a partial 
judgment: but some of the best educated men it has 
been my pleasure to know received their degrees at the 
printer s college. 

Mr. Bailey, having learned his art, was for some time 
the associate printer, publisher, and editor of a country 
newspaper ; a business, I suspect, not very lucrative or 
attractive. It did not fill the measure of his hopes ; 
and, in 1845, he left the printing-office for the study of 
the law. He pursued his studies in the office of Messrs. 
Torrey and Wood of Fitchburg, sound lawyers and most 
estimable men. Their appreciation of their student was 
such, that upon his admission to the bar in December, 
1848, he was received into the ffi'm as a partner. 

Mr. Bailey had been in the practice of his profession 
some thirteen years before his election to this House. 
A leading position at the bar in New England is seldom 
attained in thirteen years, and especially at a bar, which, 
even from days before the Revolution, has been so emi- 
nent as that of the county of Worcester. But Mr. 
Bailey had acquired high rank among his brethren, and 
by courteous manners, careful learning, sound judgment, 
and sterling integrity, had secured the respect of the 
people and of courts and juries. 

His public life was very brief. In 1856, he was 
elected a representative in the Legislature of Massa- 



88 DEATH OF HON. GOLDSMITH F. BAILEY. 

chusetts ; and, in 1858 and 1860, was a member of the 
State Senate. In this new field of labor he was emi- 
nently successfnl ; and, in his second year in the Senate, 
it may be fairly said, there was no man in the body in 
whom his colleagues or the public reposed more con- 
fidence. 

The ability and fidelity Avitli which he discharged 
these high duties attracted the attention and won the 
regard of the people of his district ; and in November, 
18G(), in a canvass warmly contested by an able and 
popular man, he was elected to this House. 

Pie took his seat at the extra session in July. But 
over his new and expanded horizon the night was 
already shutting down. The hand of death was laid 
visibly upon him. You could hear the very rustling of 
his wings. 

He came back in December apparently a little better. 
It was but the glow of sunset, — the flickering of the 
fiame before it goes out. He lost strength from day to 
day, and at last went home to die, — to realize the 
Spanish benediction, "■ May you die among your kin- 
dred ! " and, what is of infinitely greater moment, the 
divine benediction, " Blessed are the dead who die in 
the Lord." 

To our iKiirow vision, Mr. Speaker, such a life 
seems iinpcircct, such a dcatli prcMiiature. — to an restle 
witli adverse fortune, as Jacob with the angel, until 
\()U Nvrest from it its l)lessing; to struggle through 
\oiitli and early iii;iiiliood ; to r(M<li the tlireshold of 
niatiii'c liff. <>t" usct'iilin'ss. and of honor, and to sink 
wcjirv and exhausted heh)re tlie ()[)en door. 



DEATH OF HON. GOLDSMITH F. BAILEY. 89 

It is a narrow view, Mr. Speaker, which a serene 
trust in God and in his infinite wisdom and infinite good- 
ness at once dispels. We wipe the mist from our eyes, 
and see that all is well. In the presence and with the 
consciousness of an immortal life, what matters it 
whether much or little be spent this side the veil, 
provided, as with our departed brother, it is well 
spent? 

Mr. Speaker, death is busy everywhere around us. 
The accomplished jurist, the pure patriot, the states- 
man wise and good, passes away in the sabbath stillness.* 
Amid the thunders of artillery rocking like a cradle 
land and sea, amid fire and smoke, the shrieks of the 
wounded, the groans of the dying, the wail of defeat, 
and the shouts of triumph, the angel-reapers are gar- 
nering in fields seemingly not white for the harvest. 
The flower of our youth, the beauty of our Israel, is 
slain in our high places. The victories in this holy 
struggle for national life and "liberty in law" are 
sealed with our most precious blood. Yet in this hour 
of chastened triumph, of mingled joy and sadness, that 
tranquil death in a far-off New-England home comes 
very nigh to us with its solemn, I trust not unheeded 
warning, " Be ye also ready." 

I offer the following resolutions: — 

Resolved, That the House has heard with profound sorrow the 
announcement of the death of Hon. Goldsmith F. Bailey, a member 
of this House from the Ninth Congressional District of the State of 
Massachusetts. 



* Samuel F. Vinton. 
12 



90 DEATH OF HON. GOLDSMITH F. BAILEY. 

Resolved^ That this House tenders to the widow and relatives of 
the deceased the expression of its deep sympathy in this afflicting 
bereavement. 

Resolved, That thejClerk of this House communicate to the Avidow 
of the deceased a copy of these resolutions. 

Resolved (as a further mark of respect), That a copy of these 
resolutions be communicated to the Senate, and that the House do 
noAV adjourn. 



91 



CASE OF THE "TRENT." 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JAN. 7, 1862. 

I DESIRE to say a word upon the subject to which 
the motion* refers. 

Mr. Speaker, the surrender is made, the thing done. 
In the presence of great duties, we have no time for 
the luxury of grief. Complaint of the Government 
would be useless, if not groundless. It was too much 
to ask of it to take another war on its hands. Pos- 
sibly the elaborate and ingenious argument of the 
Secretary might have been spared. The matter was 
in a nutshell; the answer, in a word: "Take them. 
There are duties lying nearer to us. We can wait." 

But we are not called upon, Mr. Speaker, to say 
that the demand of England was manly or just. It was 
unmanly and unjust. It was a demand, which, in view 
of her history, of the rights she had always claimed 
and used as a belligerent power, of the principles which 
her greatest of jurists. Lord Stowell, had embedded 
in the law of nations, England was fairly estopped 
to make. But I rely on no estoppel: I pause not to 
inquire as to the consistency of England, or how far 
she is influenced by the consideration that she is now a 

* The motion to refer the message of the President, transmitting the correspondence 
on this case, to the Committee on Foreign Affairs. 



92 CASE OF THE TRENT. 

neutral power, and we are in a struggle for national 
life ; or to express surprise that her belligerent doc- 
trines, so suddenly become obsolete, have been swept 
as cobwebs from her path. This is a question of legal 
right; and, as such, I will look it in the face. We 
may feel compelled to make concessions : we will ask 
none. The claim of England is that the " Trent" was 
pursuing a lawful and innocent voyage, and that the 
taking from her of Messrs. Mason and Slidell was an 
affront to the British flag and a violation of interna- 
tional law. 

The legal questions involved are simple, and may 
be briefly and plainly stated. 

Had we the right of visitation and search'? There 
is no controversy on this point. Nothing is better 
settled in the law of nations than the right of a belli- 
gerent to visit and search the vessel of a neutral for 
contraband of war, or to ascertain if she is employed 
in the transportation of military persons or despatches 
of the enemy. Was the " Trent " so employed ? How is 
that question to be settled ^ Tlie obious answer is by 
the exlsiuKj law of nations. The question is, not what 
rule owjJd uoin to be adopted, but what is the exist'otfj 
rule I New rules are guides for future action, not 
tests of the past. The common hiw of nations, like 
that of England and of tliis country, is, to a large extent, 
a law of precedents. These precedents are, however, 
of wci^lit and authority for the j)ri)iclj)h'S iuvolrcrl in 
their determination, and not merely in cases where all 
tlic facts are identical. 'I'lie whole body of the common 
law is llie result of this distinction. It could not 



CASE OF THE TRENT. 93 

otherwise be a science or intelligent rule of action. 
The province of courts, of jurists, and of statesmen, is 
to apply settled principles to new combinations of facts. 
From the mass of authorities let us extract the prin- 
ciples applicable to the case. 

1. The fair result of the authorities, and especially 
of the English authorities, is that the carrying of the 
despatches of a belligerent is a violation of neutrality, 
the penalty of which is not only the seizure of the de- 
spatches, but the seizure and confiscation of the vehicle 
which carries them, if the carriage be with the know- 
ledge or complicity of the owner or master. 

2. The rule includes the official despatches of the 
enemy, whether relating to civil or military affairs. 

3. The form in which the despatches are borne is 
immaterial. They may be oral as well as written, em- 
bodied as well as upon parchment. The mischief is the 
same. The reason of the rule covers the substance, 
which is the thing sent. 

4. If the neutral is serving the belligerent, doing his 
work, the fact that the despatches, living or written, 
were taken at a neutral port, and that, at the time of 
the seizure, the vessel was going from one neutral port 
to another, is material only upon the question of the for- 
feiture of the vessel, and as tending to show that the 
despatches were taken without the privity of master 
or owner. The result to be effected — the aid to the 
one belligerent, and the injury to the other — is the 
same. The sanction of the exception would be the 
constant evasion, the practical suspension, of the rule 
itself. 



94 CASE OF THE TRENT. 

The substance of the whole matter is this : By caiTy- 
ing the despatches of the enemy, in whatever form 
embodied, the greatest possible service may be done 
to one belligerent, and the greatest possible injury to 
another. 

If, then, the "Trent" had been brought in for adju- 
dication, and had been condemned, England could not 
have said, that, as matter of laio^ the condemnation was 
wrong. She might and Avould have said, that, as mat- 
ter of courtesy, our officers should have foreborne the 
exercise of their extreme right, and have suffered the 
vessel, the other passengers and cargo, to proceed on 
the voyage. 

We might well have said, that, from the beginning, it 
had been the policy of this Government to enlarge and 
strengthen the rights of neutrals; to free neutral com- 
merce from every unnecessary restraint ; that especially 
had this been the case with respect to the treating of 
persons as within tlie rule of contraband of war. We 
might have shown with what anxiety we had sought to 
limit the rule on tliis point " to soldiers in the actual ser- 
vice of the enenni ; " that in our treaties with France, in 
our treaties with Mexico and the South-American States, 
we had inserted tliis important exce])tion to, and limita- 
tion of, (he rule of international law ; in all cases, how- 
ever, ])r()\ idiiiL,^ that the limitation slu)nl(l not extend to 
those nations with nhich we had no sncli treaty; of which 
iMi^i^land was one. ^\'e might have well said, that the 
])roi)riety of this limitation is every day becoming more 
a])])arent ; tliat the introduction of steam into naviga- 
tion had brought nations into closer proximity, and into 



CASE OF THE TRENT. 95 

more frequent and regular intercourse ; that the wants 
of modern commerce and modern culture had made 
mail-routes as necessary on the sea as on the land ; and 
that we ought to remove all obstructions from the path- 
way of these messengers of civilization and of peace. 
We might have said, We will gladly assent to such mo- 
difications of the law of nations as shall meet and satisfy 
these wants ; the modifications most clearly demanded 
being, that no persons shall be deemed within the prin- 
ciple of contraband of war but soldiers in service ; and 
that, when hostile despatches are taken from neutral 
mail-steamers, the claims of humanity and the interests 
of the commercial world shall be respected, and the 
vessel be permitted to proceed on its voyage without 
unnecessary delay, — the legality of the seizure being 
determined without the presence of the ship. 

As to this case, we stand ui)on the existing law ; we 
feel ourselves to he justified by the law as written. 
If you think otherwise, we will, in deference to the 
excellent suggestion made by the British Government to 
the Paris Congress of 1856, have " recourse to the 
offices of a friendly power." We will submit the whole 
matter to arbitration, and abide the result. 

But it is said, Mr. Speaker, that the omission to bring 
in the vessel for adjudication rendered the whole pro- 
ceeding void ab initio. A word upon this point. There 
is no just ground for complaint of the proceedings, so 
far as they went. The complaint is, not of what was 
done, but what was left undone. Two questions arise 
here : First, was there a sufficient legal reason for not 
bringing in the vessel \ Secondly, what, in the ab- 



96 CASE OF THE TRENT. 

sence of such legal reason, is the effect of the omis- 
sion "? 

1. Was there a sufficient reason for not bringing in 
the " Trent " ? 

Some things are plain. It is plain that Capt. Wilkes 
understood that the " Trent " was lawful prize, and 
that his course was a proceeding in the capture of 
prize of war. It is plain also that he determined to 
waive his right to take in the vessel as prize, and to suffer 
her to proceed on her voyage. These facts are of the 
highest importance. The difference between the board- 
ing of a vessel by a boat's crew, and taking from her 
men or goods, — the act constituting no part of a prize 
proceeding, — and the release of a prize by a captor 
in the exercise of his discretion, and for reasons of 
necessity or of humanity, is plain and vital : neither 
ingenuity nor dulness can confound them. The whole 
proceedings of Capt. Wilkes were characterized by the 
utmost good faitli. Had he a legal excuse for not 
bringing in the vessel for adjudication "? We do not 
expect from a sailor, however gallant and accomplished, 
the precision of special pleading. He gives as the 
first reason the want of a suiiicient prize-crew, in con- 
sequence of his being so reduced in officers and men. 
AVas that tlic fact ? It will, I have no doubt, be found 
to be so. AW' have now the statement of an officer and 
a gentleman, and nothing to control it. If such was 
the fact, and Caj)!. A\' likes acted upon it, lie was justi- 
fied in law for not briii<xing the " Trent" in. it is im- 
material that motives of humanity concurred with and 
fortified that conclusion. 'I'he heart responded to the 



CASE OF THE TRENT. 97 

head. It neither assumed its prerogative nor questioned 
it. It only said, "Amen." If the legal excuse existed 
and was acted upon, it was enough ; and the ground 
upon which the Crown advisers are reported to have 
proceeded falls from under them. 

2. But suppose there was error in not bringing in 
the vessel : what is the result ? It is, that the questions 
at issue must be settled by the sovereigns of the parties 
without the aid of a prize-court. The prize-court is 
the inquest of the sovereign of the captor, and for his 
protection. It settles the question of seizure, so far as 
the rights of property are concerned. It does not set- 
tle the question of right as between the sovereigns. In 
this case, the question would have been as to the for- 
feiture of the vessel : the persons or despatches would 
not have been directly involved ; the judgment would 
not have operated upon them. If the vessel had been 
brought in and condemned by a court of admiralty, and 
England had believed that the judgment of the court 
was against the law of nations, she would not have 
acquiesced ; she would not have been bound to ac- 
quiesce. The same controversy would have opened ; 
the same questions to be settled as now. — Pinkneys 
Statement of the Law in the Case of the " Betsey,'' 
Wheaton's Memoirs of Pinkney, p. 199. 

Those questions would have been. Had we the right 
of search ? was it fairly exercised ? were the persons 
taken within the prohibition ? and to every one of these 
questions the law of nations would have answered in 
the affirmative ; and, if England had consulted her 
oracles, she would have heard the same response. It 

13 



98 CASE OF THE TREKT. 

is not too much to say, that Lord Stowcll would have 
condemned the " Trent " on the double ground of carry- 
ing despatches of the enemy and of resistance to 
search. 

Mr. Speaker, when this whole matter shall have 
been calmly and thoroughly considered and weighed, 
the judgment of the civilized world will be, or should be, 
with us. We have the first impression, and not the 
sober second thought. The question lohich has been 
considered is, rather what the law should he made to he, 
than ivhat it is. When the matter is more carefully 
weighed, it will be seen and felt that no wrong was done 
to England ; that there was no wrong in the forbear- 
ance to exercise an extreme right ; no insult, for none 
was intended ; that our " failing," if any, " leaned to 
virtue's side," was a relaxation of the iron rigor of law 
from motives of humanity and Christian courtesy ; that, 
on the other hand, England has done to us a great wrong 
in availing herself of our moment of weakness to make 
a demand, which, accompanied as it was by " the pomp 
and circumstance of war," was insolent in spirit, unman- 
ly and unjust. It was indeed courteous in language ; 
it was the courtesy of Joab to Amasa as he smote him 
in the fifth rib : " Art thou in health, my brother ? " 
That message of Lord llussell to Lord Iaous which 
could cross the Atlantic would not liave liad ])rojcctile 
force enough to have i)ass(>d from Dover to Calais. 

Such is the ix'iialty of weakness, even temporary 
weakness. 

L pon tlic groiinds u])on whicli lliis surrender has been 
made, nothing is gained for the cause of neutral rights. 



CASE OF THE TRENT. 99 

The lesson taught us by this case is, that not only may 
every mail steamer of a neutral be seized, and searched 
for contraband of war or despatches of the enemy, but 
that her voyage may and must be broken up, and the 
vessel brought in for adjudication. Neutral commerce 
may well pray relief from her friends. 

But will England feel herself bound by the precedent 
such as it is '? So long as it is convenient, — not a mo- 
ment longer. Her standard of right has been, is, and 
will be, the maritime power and interests of England. 
There is nothing in the " law of nature and of" nations 
that will stand in the way of her imperious will. 



100 



SPEECH AT THE MASS MEETING FOR RECRUITING, 
ON BOSTON COMMON. 



August 27, 1862. 



Mr. President and Fellow-Citizens, — If you could 
analyze the feelings of a candle upon being lit up just 
as the sun was going down, you would appreciate my 
feelings in succeeding New England's most accomplished 
orator.* But you neither expect, nor would you tolerate, 
an elaborate speech. Indeed, if I consulted my own 
heart, my lips would be sealed. 

When the beauty of our Israel is slain on her high 
places ; when the sons of our love are perishing in loath- 
some dungeons ; when armed treason is battering the 
gates of the capital ; when the nation itself is struggling, 
gasping, for the breath of its Hfc ; rhetoric, logic, elo- 
quence even, seem mean and paltry. Nothing, indeed, 
'is ehxpient but the roar of the cannon and the crack 
of the rifle, nothing logical but the sword and the 
bayonet. 

The issues Ix'fore the country are of life or death, 
glory or sliainc order or anarchy, union or cliaos, a 
nation or a ^lexico. And. in this liour of awful j)eril, 
there is for us but one hope, one way of salvation ; and 



Mr. Kverett. 



MASS MEETING FOR RECRUITING. 101 

that is to subdue armed rebellion by arms, — to over- 
whelm it by superior force on the field of battle. 

Processions and banners, touching allusions to Bunker 
Hill and Faneuil Hall, sentimental resolutions, procla- 
mations beginning and ending in words, bills of confis- 
cation and emancipation, after much travail utterly still 
born, won't do the work. If you mean to save the coun- 
try, you have got to fight for it. The negro can't do it 
for you ; Providence won't do it for you, unless you put 
your shoulders to the wheel. You have got to work 
out your own salvation ; in this case, without " fear or 
trembling." 

The only alternative is to sue for peace, and submit 
to dissolution ; to betray the sublime trust committed to 
us by God and our fathers, and to rot into dishonored 
graves at home. 

If this be so, men of Boston, patriotic, self-sacri- 
ficing men, capable of living and dying for your 
country, what wait you for % The path of duty lies 
open before you. Interest, duty, honor, patriotism, the 
sense of manhood, all point one way : that way leads 
to struggle and to victory, and, through victory, to 
union and peace. Controversy as to the causes of the 
war is useless now. Grumbling, carping criticism of 
the past is mean and disloyal now. Side-issues, parti- 
san or philanthropic, are moral treason now. They 
weaken and divide us in a struggle that requires all 
our wisdom, all our energy, all our strength, directed 
and converged to the single work and duty of subduing 
the foe in arms. Not a man, not a dollar, not a thought, 
can be wasted on any other issue. Now or never is the 



102 MASS MEETING FOR RECRUITING. 

salvation of the country possible. Hard words won't 
do it ; threats and curses won't do it ; violence won't do 
it. Nothing will do it but superior physical force in the 
field, wielded with an energy all the more terrible be- 
cause it is calm, and knows how to obey as well as to 
command. 

Fellow-citizens, we have cause for anxiety, — none 
for despair. We have under-estimated the strength and 
resources of our opponents. We have greatly under- 
estimated our own strength and resources. Rebellion 
has, we may believe, made its crowning effort : its 
bucket has touched bottom. The water in our well is 
yet deep. We can maintain a million men in the 
field ; and, on the sea, five hundred ships of war. With 
these, twenty millions of intelligent, imited, devoted 
people can vindicate the integrity of the nation, and defy 
a world in arms. 

If you would avoid intervention by foreign powers, 
the only way is to be prepared for it. Put your million 
of men into the field, and your five hundred ships upon 
your seas and rivers. Bear up the old fiag, resolved to 
live under it, to conquer with it, or die beneath its folds. 
In an hour of your weakness, other nations may inter- 
vene ; never, if you put forth your real strength, — 
ne^er. 

AVould you consent to separation, to give up this glo- 
rious Union of your fathers, where will you draw the 
line? Are the Gulf States only to be severed I Your 
enemy will not consent to that division. Will you give 
u]) the lk)rder States ? I'he liordcr States will not go. 
Jx't me say in the face of the men of Boston, that a 



MASS MEETING FOR RECRUITING. 103 

nobler, truer, more patriotic set of men, the sun does 
not shine upon, than the Union men of the Border 
States. I feel that I know them ; and I tell you, they 
will not go. If finally driven from you, no man can 
say how much of the great West would go with them, 
or where the ultimate line of division would fall. 

[Mr. Thomas here enlarged upon the geographical 
and commercial ties which bind the West to the South, 
and said there is no safety for us but in clinging to the 
Union as it was and the Constitution as it is.] 

Let us be manly, be just, be tolerant. It is the easi- 
est thing in the world to find fault, but not the wisest 
thing. In conducting war upon so vast a scale, and 
requiring so many and varied agencies, mistakes and 
blunders will be made. The race is not always to the 
swift, nor the battle to the strong. W^e have a great 
and powerful people, and at their head an upright, con- 
scientious, conservative Chief Magistrate. Let us work, 
and not grumble ; let us labor, and not faint. 



104 



THE ARMY OF THE RESERVE. 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY OF BOWDOIN 
COLLEGE, AUGUST 7, 1862. 

ISIr. President and Gentlemen, — Human culture in 
some one of its aspects is the appropriate theme of the 
occasion. In selecting the speaker from the iicld of 
active and busy life, you did not require nor look for an 
elaborate discussion of its philosophy. The fair question 
put to us, wrestlers on the dusty arena, is this : Looking 
at the subject from your stand-point, have you any prac- 
tical suggestions to make that ma}' aid us in this noblest 
of works, — the building-up not only of the living battle- 
ments of the State, but of the beings that we are, and 
are to be ? 

One of tlio most important matters in modern war- 
fare is the c()mj)osition of the army of the reserve. 
It is relied upon to sup])ly fresh forces at the instant 
of need, to su])])()rt points that are shaken, to be nNidy 
to act at (l{'cisi\(' iiioiiicnts. It sliould be composed of 
select lroo])s. well a]>i)oiiite(l, llioi'oui;-lil\ trained. nn(l(>r 
tlie eve (»t a cool. sa<;acious, and resolnte connnander. 
'I'lie need of" sueli icserM'd I'oi'ce has bi^eii painfully 
illustrated in this \\;ir for national life. In tlie most im- 
portant jnnctni'es. we lia\e failed to wiiMTctor) or secure 
its frnits from the lack of an armv in reserve. 



THE ARMY OF THE RESERVE. 105 

No better example of such a reserve can be found 
than the Imperial Guard of Napoleon, nor of its use 
than on the field of Austerlitz. 

Our life is a campaign and a warfare. It has its deci- 
sive moments, whose issues for good or evil, for victory 
or defeat, must depend on our reserved power. On the 
field of letters, on the broader field of human life, he 
only organizes victory, and commands success, behind 
whose van and corps of battle is heard the steady tramp 
of the army of the reserve. 

To some illustrations of this thought I give the hour 
your kindness has assigned to me. 

It is a stern lesson, and hard to be learned, tliat though 
the ordinary duties of life require large power, intel- 
lectual and moral, the supply must constantly exceed the 

immediate demand. It is a hard lesson, but a necessary 

« 
one. 

Life is not aU routine. It has its great temptations, 
its golden opportunities. To withstand the one, to seize 
the other, we must organize and mamtain our spiritual 
army of the reserve. There is no hope of large 
achievement, or of safety even, in impressing forces or 
foraging for suppHes on the line of march, much less on 
the eve of battle. In youth for manhood, in summer for 
winter, in sunshine for storm, in peace for war, m the 
actual for the possible, the law of Providence and fore- 
sight is universal. 

The rules for the composition of the spiritual reserve 
are simple, whatever of difficulty there may be in their 
just application. Faculties trained by patient, thorough, 
protracted discipline ; supplies carefully garnered, and 

14 



106 THE ARMY OF THE RESERVE. 

then so thoroughly digested that they will enter into the 
bone and muscle of the mind, and become power ; this 
was what Lord Bacon meant by saying knowledge was 
power. 

The nucleus is to be formed before the campaign of 
active life opens ; after that, growmg rigor of disciplme 
and daily accessions of strength. 

The magnitude and extent of the reserve are to be 
measured, not by the wants of to-day or of the next cam- 
paign, but by the possible exigencies of human life, — a 
life whose horizon is ever lifting up, whose possibilities 
of to-day are the necessities of to-morrow. 

And though there must be limitation, and exclusion 
even, no more forces than can be well kept up and main- 
tained, no half-grown conscripts, none maimed or bhnd, 
diseased or leprous, yet the recruiting-office is never 
closed ; for the campaign is never ended. 

AVe have thrift and providence ; but they take a mate- 
rial direction. We save for the dark and rainy day ; but 
we save money and houses and lands. Intellectually, we 
live from hand to mouth. We begin the life of action 
before the life of study. The residt is, that, with most 
of us, the life of ])atient study and quiet thought neccr 
botj^ins. '• Quid ciiiin aut didicimus ant scire ])otuinHis 
(pii ante ad aiiciiduin (|iiain ad cognescenduni vi'iiiinus." 

Getting knowledge ibr inmuHliati' use. crannning for 
llic occasion, we limit ourselves to the narrowest range 
'if tlic nscrul and practical: meaning, by ?f.s'r/W/, value in 
tlie shanibli's of the market; and by practlval, dexterity 
in the use of tools, without anv ])er(eption of the pruici- 
pleswliicli unili'ilir lluni. \\ i' tind, often too late except 



THE ARMY OF THE RESERVE. 107 

as a warning to others, that there is nothing in this world 
half so practical or half so economical as accurate 
knowledge, patient labor, thorough disciplme, the care- 
ful composition, the constant trainmg, of the army of the 
reserve. 

And first we may remark, that this reserved power is 
necessary to the thorough possession of ourselves. It 
is true, abstractly, that a man owns himself, his powers 
and faculties ; but, in nmety-nine cases m an hundred, 
he never comes mto the quiet enjoyment of his estate. 
With some opportunities for observing men in intel- 
lectual conflict, I venture to say there is no respect in 
which the difference is so marked as in the extent 
to M^hich they possess themselves, their own powers and 
resources. We hear much of self-culture and self-devel- 
opment ; and it is well. All true culture is self-culture ; 
all true development is self-development. We hear 
far less than we ought of the thorough possession of a 
man's self; of spiritual forces so orderly disposed, so 
loyal, so trained to prompt obedience and action, that 
they will rally, and form into Ime for service, at the fhst 
tap of the drum. 

There are men, with all the learning of the schools, 
whose learning is but a clog and hinderance : their learn- 
ing masters them, not they then- learning ; creating such 
a pressure on the brain, that it has no free, natural play 
and motion ; ever coming in at the wrong time, or coming 
in too late ; like the baggage of an eastern army, the 
great impediment to the march ; or rather like the undis- 
ciphned hordes of neftions that followed Xerxes from 
Asia to the plains of Doriscus, and from Doriscus to 



108 THE ARMY OF THE RESERVE. 

ThennopyLT. Better, infinitely better, one well-trained 
Spartan band. 

Necessary to this self-possession are calmness, — the 
calmness which springs only from the consciousness of 
strength in reserve, of measured strength, of power to 
strike the needed blow at the decisi^■e moment ; the 
orderly disposition of our forces, a place for every thing, 
and every thing m its place ; the military eye which 
surveys the whole field of action, sees where the fight 
will be thickest and hardest, and the forces needed ; and, 
rarest of powers, the power to refrain, to withhold yoiu: 
fire; to sit stiU. when there is no occasion to be on 
your feet ', the power and gift of silence, the power to say 
nothing when you have nothing to say, or nothmg that 
had not better be unsaid ; the power of masterly inac- 
tivity, the effective grace of repose. 

Instead of schools to teach us how to talk, we want 
schools to teach us how to be silent ; sanitary clubs and 
commissions, whose end and aim shall be to prevent the 
spread of this insftnahile cacoethes loquendi. 

In this power of self-mastery is wrapped the faculty and 
grace and liberty of obedience ; the power to recognize the 
})resence of law, and to bend to it ; to mark its bounds, 
and kee]) witliin them. " Qui nescit ignorare ignorat 
scire." 'Hie rebellious is never the truly wise spirit. It 
is ibr e\cr l>re;ikiiiii: ;iii(l l)ruisiiig itself against the \\alls 
of its fancied piisun-lionse. Into \\\v olx-dient. vwv oj)en, 
and reeeptixe spirit, wisdom loM's to come and take up 
lier abode. 

Jle only well coiiiiiiaiKU who Knows to serve well, to 
obey promptly, gracefully, Nvitli thorough loyalty of mind 



THE ARMY OF THE RESERVE. 109 

and heart ; the rarest of virtues, not the peculiar vir- 
tue of oiu* countrymen, very apt to confound the absence 
of wholesome restraint with liberty ; whereas true free- 
dom is for the loyal soul, — liberty in law. The loyal 
spirit feels restraint as a woman wears the bracelet on 
her white arm ; the rebel spirit, as the culprit the hand- 
cuffs on his galled and swollen wrists. 

Again : we remark, that the gathering and trauiing of 
this army of the reserve is the easiest and cheapest way 
of conducting, not a great war only, but the campaign of 
life. 

If a man means to do any thing in this world to win 
the battle of life, it is easier to he than to seem. In the 
long-run, reality is easier than sham, wisdom than cun- 
ning, the king's highway than the by-path or cross-cut. 
It is often a simpler thuig to acquire strength than to 
conceal the lack of it. Nothing indeed is more exhaust- 
ing than the shifts to cover up ignorance ; the craft 
requhed to seem to know what a man knows not ; the 
constant caution, lest our hollow wares should come to 
the light ; the everlasting repetition " of wise saws and 
modern instances ; " the perpetual dread of being found 
out, — that the blown bladder may be pierced by some 
shaft of ridicule, and coUapse for ever ; to say nothing 
of the smkmg of the knees, the drooping of the head, 
and the suffusion of blood upon the brain. 

" The easiest way," said Su- Boyle Roche, " to avoid 
danger, is to meet it plump. If there is work in a man's 
way, the best possible thing that can be done is to go 
through it, and on a man's own feet. If he ride round it, 
nine chances out of ten he must come back, and walk 



110 THE ARMY OF THE RESERVE. 

straight through it." It often costs less labor to do work 
than to avoid it. Looking at a specific work or duty, the 
simplest and best thing is to do it, and do it well if you can. 
Looking at Hfe as a whole, the truth of the remark be- 
comes yet clearer. The doing of a thmg well not only 
prevents the necessity of doing it agam, but adds to 
the mind's resei^ed force, and renders the domg of the 
next thing easier and simpler. The resisting of one 
temptation helps to disarm the power of the second. It 
is not long before labor and self-denial become positive 
enjoyments, and this without including the fjaudla cer- 
taminis, or the highest of all possible satisfactions, the 
pui'est of all possible delights, — the consciousness of 
duty discharged. 

There can be no real comfort or satisf<\ction in a cam- 
paign in which you have to rely upon raw, undisciplmed, 
not to say mutinous forces, hastily conscripted, acting 
without system or concert. You must feel there is a 
reserved force, well appointed and trained, upon which 
you can draw in a moment of need ; whose strength you 
have measured ; and which, great or small, is reliable and 
forthcoming. 

Lor example : A young man is to study law. It is his 
business to understand it, and expound it to others. 
Fidelity to liis clients and to his oath of oilice nM[uir(>s 
this. lie caiiiiot. with (Iccciit self-res])ect or as an lionest 
man. assume to say what the law is, unless \w has dili- 
gently sought to know what it is. The best. th(> cheapest 
thing he can do for hi^ < aiiipaign of lile. is to bring to 
the stu(l\ of thr law a iiiiiid well trained and enriched 
b) liberal culture, and then to set about the mastery of 



THE ARMY OF THE RESERVE. Ill 

its principles. This training, this culture, this mastery 
of principles, will make up a glorious army of the reserve, 
the worth of which, his life long, can never be overrated ; 
the want of which, his life long, can never be supphed. 
Men of genius and untuing industry have, mdeed, a mea- 
sure of success without them. But they, of all men, most 
deeply regret their lack ; for they, of all men, best under- 
stand what larger victories might have been gracefully 
won with their aid. 

How common, on the other hand, utter failure from 
the want of this reserved power ! 

A young man of fair powers, but of little or no train- 
ing, is anxious, restless, for active life. He would enter 
upon the arena not only unarmed, but incapable of bear- 
ing the weight of armor. He wiU have only practical 
knowledge. When the occasion comes, he will study for 
it. He has what are called j^^omising qualities ; qualities 
which seldom or never pay. He has a certain facility of 
acquisition, but retains nothing save the confidence which 
such facility is apt to beget. He talks fluently, never 
hesitates for a word, and seldom gets the right one. He 
writes with perfect ease, and therefore never writes well. 
He never doubts, and therefore never understands. 

His wished-for opportunity comes. He gets up a 
great array of cheap learning and cheaper eloquence ; 
enters upon the contest with drum beating and banner 
flying. Difficulties sprmg up he had not foreseen, and 
he has no reserved force to meet them. He shrivels, and 
his client's cause with him. The way of life is strewn 
with sprouts like this. " Having no root in themselves, 
they endure but for a time." 



112 THE ARMY OF THE RESERVE. 

It is obi-ious to remark, that, in life as in war, the force 
which may suffice for ordinary sendee may be whoUy 
inadequate for its larger exigencies, for its decisive mo- 
ments. In almost every life, those decisive moments 
come, when the question of victory or defeat, of press- 
ing onward or Imgering behind, must depend upon our 
reserved power ; when the door of opportmiity is swung 
open, and, if ready, we may enter ; if not, the door closes 
upon us. 

Great occasions do not make great men. (Of this the 
country needs no proof.) They iind them out, and give 
them hirger development and a broader theatre of ac- 
tion. Great men tnake great occasions. They impart to 
them a strength, a beauty, a glory of their own. They 
bathe and irradiate them with the light of their ge- 
nius. They give to them of then own immortality. 
Nay, more : great men are great occasions, the great 
events of history ; not merely the beacon-lights on the line 
of human progress, but the efficient motive-powers, the 
causoi causantes : they make, they constitute history. 
Their hands bend the arch of the new heaven, and mould 
the new earth, if so be that they feel the Divine Arm 
around them and uplioldinii^ them, and do the work of 
(jlod with the armor of (iod. 1 have no great faith in 
" village ]Iam])dens " or the '' mute, mglorious Miltons " 
that rest in country clinrcliyanls. If a man has a \v\cr to 
luoNC tlic woild. the chances are that \w will tind a j)lace 
to put it. (ienius is very apt to crop out : so men of 
lar^c reserved ])()\ver are a])t to tind occasions to bring 
it into action, to give it effective utterance. 



THE ARMY OF THE RESERVE. 113 

The introduction, into the Senate of the United 
States, of a resolution in relation to the sale of the 
public lands, was not a great occasion; The debate 
upon it for some days dragged heavily. The vast re- 
served power of one man made it the event of our 
history for a generation. 

The second speech of Mr. Hayne, to which Mr. Web- 
ster was called upon to reply, was able and brilliant, its 
constitutional argument specious, its attack upon New 
England and upon Mr. Webster sharp even to bitterness. 
But Mr. Hayne did not understand this matter of reserved 
power. He had seen Mr. Webster's van and corps of 
battle, but had not heard the fii'm and measured tread 
behind. 

It was a decisive moment m Mr. Webster's career. 
He had no time to impress new forces ; scarcely time to 
burnish his armor. All eyes were turned to him. Some 
of his best friends were depressed and anxious. He was 
calm as a summer's mornmg ; calm, his friends thought, 
even to indifference. But his calmness was the repose 
of conscious power, the hush of nature before the storm. 
He had measured his strength. He was in possession 
of himself. He knew the composition of his " army of 
the reserve." He had the eye of a great commander, 
and he took in the Avhole field at a glance. He had the 
prophetic eye of logic, and he saw the end from the be- 
ginning. The exordium itself was the prophecy, the 
assurance, of victory. Men saw the sun of Austerhtz, 
and felt that the Imperial Guard was moving on to the 
conflict. He came out of the conflict with the immortal 
name of the Defender of the Constitution. 

15 



114 THE ARMY OF THE RESERVE. 

Of this speech, and the mode of its deUvery, one of 
the greatest of onr orators has said, " It has been my 
fortune to hear some of the ablest speeches of the great- 
est Hving orators on both sides of the water ; but I must 
confess, I never heard any thing which so completely 
realized my conception of what Demosthenes was when 
he delivered the Oration for the Crown." I venture to 
add, that, taking into view the circumstancas under which 
the speech was delivered, especially the brief time for 
preparation, the importance of the subject, the breadth of 
its \iews, the strength and clearness of its reasoning, the 
force and beauty of its style, its keen wit, its repressed 
but subduing passion, its lofty strains of eloquence, the 
audience to which it was addressed (a more tlian Roman 
Senate), its effect upon that audience, and the larger 
audience of a grateful and admiring country, history has 
no nobler example of reserved power brought at once 
and effectively into action. The wretched sophistries 
of nullification and secession were swept before his 
bui'ning eloquence as the dry grass is swe})t b} tlie 
fire of tlic prairies. 

The general impression in liearing Mr. Webster was. I 
think, tliat. i^i'cat as was tlie sptH'cli. tlic man ^\■as i:;reater 
than llic speech ; that tliere was ^ast rc^serwd power be- 
hind the ])o\\('r in action. Sometimes it \\as brought to 
the conthct at a monient's waniiiiLi;. 1 remember snch 
an occasion some lointeen xcars a<^o. It ^^as at a small 
assemhix (»l abont an hnndred LTcntleiiien. Mr. W ebstcM" 
had s|)oken. in icph to a sentiment in his honor, well, 
bnt without i^reat life or \iL;-or. A remark 1)\ a suhse- 
(pienl speaker looked like a rellection upon his public 



THE ARMY OF THE RESERVE. H5 

course. It were better to have roused the Hon from his 
lau'. There was no sudden spring, no visible passion ; 
but you could see and feel that the very depths of his 
being- were stirred. Those dark eyes, in thek deep, dark 
caverns, glowed like stars. The hall in which we sat 
vibrated with the vibrations of his thought. 

The speech I will not assume to report. One of the 
topics, I remember, was his relations with the Common- 
wealth of Massachusetts, the open arms with which she 
had received him, the kindness she had heaped upon 
him, the trust and confidence she had reposed in him. 
His great heart became liquid as he spoke, and he poured 
it out in love, loyalty, and gratitude : then, drawing him- 
self up to his full stature, till through our moist and 
loving eyes his proportions seemed colossal, he said, with 
quiet dignity but with trembling lips, " I have dared to 
hope, Mr. President and gentlemen, that I have not 
proved myself wholly unworthy of her trust and con- 
fidence." I never before understood the lines of IVIil- 
ton : — 

" The angel ended, but in Adam's ear 
So charming left his voice, that he awhile 
Thought him still speaking, still stood fixed to hear." 

He sleeps well by the sea he loved so well. 

His prayer was granted. When his eyes were turned 
to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, he did not 
see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments 
of a once-glorious Union. 

There is another reason for the composition and disci- 
pline of the army of the reserve, to which I attach much 
importance. It is, that power in reserve is necessary to 



116 THE ARMY OF THE RESERVE. 

give full force and effect to power in action. Of the 
impressions made upon us by the use of great power, 
material or spnitual, one of the most striking, I think, is 
the sense it creates of power not used ; of power behind 
the power in action, greater than itself. The power 
which is wholly spent and exhausted in the effort loses 
half its charm. For its highest effect, it must beget 
the impression, that we see but in part, the arc of a 
power full-orbed, the stream from a full, oAcrflowmg 
fountain, the vanguard of a greater host. We do not 
admhe the well whose bottom is hit by every dip of the 
bucket, the mill-pond that is drained for one grist (even 
if it be our corn), the picture without a background, the 
quiver Avith one arrow, the hen with one chicken, the 
mind with one idea, the heavens with one star, cAen if 
it be the north star. 

A speech seems to us truly great, only when a man 
stands behind it who is greater than the speech, with 
power in reserve ; not if it plainly drains his memory, 
exhausts his vocabulary, and stretches his brain to lesion. 
It is not merely what is said, but who says it ; not merely 
what he says, but what he is. 

\\'hen, in a crisis of our history, there was given, at a 
festive celebration in AX'asliington, the sentiment, '• 'i'he 
Federal Union, it imisl \)v jn'cxerved^''' the words and the 
thought wvvv l";iinili;ir mid (•oiiiiiKHipliicc ; hut the (le\()t('(l 
|);itri()tisni. the cnci'^ctic brain, the coininanding spirit, 
the uiillincliinLi: (Dui-ai^c, tlic iron will, of Andrew .lack- 
son were hcliind the woi'ds. and the country breatlied 
more iVeely lor their ntterance. Would to (jlod our 
heroes were not all in history ! 



THE ARMY OF THE RESERVE. 117 

" Clan-Alpine's best are backward borne : 
Where, where, was Roderick then ? 
One blast upon his bugle-horn 
Were worth a thousand men." 

Of material power, it is also true, that its effect is 
deepened and strengthened by the sense of a greater 
power behind the power we see or hear or feel. 

Night, solemn, glorious night, with its hosts of stars, 
has its army of the reserve, of suns and stars behind the 
stars we see, in infinite procession ; the countless legions 
whose banners of light never yet waved to mortal eye. 

Nature indeed, in her beauty or in her grandeur ; in 
the dewdrop sparkling in the chalice of a flower, or in 
Mont Blanc touched with the first light of morning ; 
in the field-brook that sings with the singing corn, or in 
Erie pouring out its world of waters ; in summer s 
breeze or winter s tempest ; in glassy lake or surging 
ocean ; first deeply impresses us when we feel its re- 
served power, see on its face the smile, and read in its 
living lines the thoughts, of God. 

Ai't also touches and moves us by its reserved power. 

This picture is true to the rules, the idea of the 
painter fairly brought out, the work finished even with 
the minutest detail of Dusseldorf. It is not without 
power, but power fully spent and exhausted. We look 
and comprehend it, and do not care to look again. It 
has no reserved power; nothing to pay for a second 
coming. 

Here is another, of which a critic has said, " It was a 
crude painted medley, with a general foggy appearance." 
Be not dismayed ; look again, look into it. The fog 



118 THE ARMY OF THE RESERVE. 

gradually lifts up, and the picture comes out of seeming 
chaos, and marshals itself into light and order and beauty. 
Some mist may yet hang over it ; but it glows and is alive 
with the genius and the inspiration of the poet-painter. 

In the great masters of English thought (of the world's 
thought), you have striking examples of this reserved 
power. You read an Essay of Bacon, or the "Advance- 
ment of Learning," twenty times. New forces of wisdom 
and beauty come out at every reading. You find the 
most diligent study has not exhausted the depths of 
meaning. With a telescopic vision, what seem to be 
nebulae now would be resolved into burning stars. You 
get some idea of the height and breadth of Bacon by 
reading the edition of his Essays by Whately. The 
archbishop is a sensible man, of large mental stature ; 
but how he looks trotting along by the side of Lord 
Bacon, and occasionally throwing over his shoulders a 
corner of the giant's mantle ! 

And the great master of the drama; the priest who sat 
jit the confessional of the human passions ; the philoso- 
pher who unravelled the mysteries of our being as the 
cunning fingers of Miss Prissy would untangle a snarled 
thread ; the child of Nature, wlio laid his ear so close to 
his mother's heart that he could hear its faintest beatings ; 
liistorian, statesman, sage, poet (iioihtei, maker): such 
is our sense of reserved power in him, that what we most 
admire and love, as " Hamlet," " ISIacbeth," " Lear," the 
" Temi)est," seem really but the j)Iai/s of Shakspeare, the 
sport imd pastime of his mighty spirit; waves born to 
our feet from a dee^) sea our oar has never vexed or 
plummet sounded. 



THE ARMY OF THE RESERVE. 119 

Burke, whom th*e late Mr. Buckle would put in 
a strait-jacket, but who will be likely to outlive his 
keepers ; ( cfids custodiet custodes f) whose volume of 
thought poiu's out very much as Niagara pours over the 
Horseshoe, with the rapid's thunder, the mist, the spray, 
the bow of everlasting beauty ; never seems exhausted, 
but as if there were an hundred inland seas of thought 
behind, waiting to be poured out. 

A Httle reflection will satisfy us how constantly, though 
it may be unconsciously, we use this test of the fulness 
or want of reserved power. You read a book, an essay, 
or an article in a review, and you determine almost at a 
glance whether the matter has just been pumped mto the 
author's skull, and then pumped out agam, or whether 
he draws from a full living spring. The modem multi- 
plication of books is, for the most part, the pouring of 
water from one pitcher into another. Very few of them 
are mixed, as Mr. Opie mixed his colors, with brains. As 
we grow older, we seek the fountains, the old wells of 
English undeiiled ; for the great teachers of the race 
and of the coming generations have spoken or written in 
our mother- tongue. I shall go to my grave, I fear, in the 
delusion that Bacon, 

" In one rich soul, 
Plato, the Stagyrite, and Tully, joined ; " 

that Shakspeare held the perfect nnrror up to nature ; 
that the " Paradise Lost " is the greatest of epics, if not 
the first; that, of written and forensic eloquence, the 
great masters are Edmund Burke and Thomas Erskine ; 
that no man is fitted for the bar, the pulpit, or the chair 
of instruction, who has not given himself to the diligent 



120 THE ARMY OF THE RESERVE. 

and thorough study of the EngUsh classics. A certain 
grace, polish, refinement, may be got ui other schools : 
these constitute our jmhidinn viice. 

Reserved power may not always prevent partial defeat 
or temporary faihire ; but it will avert the dismay and 
despondency wliich too often follow partial faihne. The 
man of reserved power may bend before the storm ; but 
he ^^ill bend only as, liandor says, " the oak bends before 
the passing wind, to rise again in its majesty and in its 
strength." Nay, it seems at times as if, Anta?us-like, he 
got new strength from contact with the earth, new "vigor 
from the fall. Apparent defeat may be real victory ; the 
movmg from Moultrie to Sumter. Ilis army of the 
reserve may not have been brought into action at 
the needed moment. He will be ready for another 
trial. He knows the power is in him, and will do its 
work. 

We all remember the case of Sheridan. After his 
first speech in the House of Commons, he asked ]Mi-. 
AVoodfall what he thought of it. "I am sorry to say, I 
do not tliink it is in your lin(\ ^'ou had luucli better 
have stufk to your old pursuits." — " It is in me, and it 
shall come o///." It did indeed come out. . lie lived to 
hear from Pitt (no longer sneering Pitt) the motion, that 
the House of Connnons should adjourn to recover from the 
effects of Mr. Sheridan's eloquence. 

'Ihc hrilli;iiit writer and statesman I )'lsi-;ieli. late Chaii- 
rcllor of" the lAehe(|Uer, and h'ader ol" the lIoUs(> of 
('oiiimons. was literall\ gi'oaiied and sneered (lo\\n in liis 
iirst attempt to s])eak upon the lioor. lie knew hi^ r(^- 
served strengtli. " The day will come when you will be 



THE ARMY OF THE RESERVE. 121 

glad to hear me." It came long ago. He is to-day, with 
the exception of his successor, IMr. Gladstone, the most 
effective debater m the Commons of England. 

The material army of the reserve, though trained by 
the disciplme of conflict and endurance, is worn and 
wasted by the same cause. Its thinned and broken ranks 
must be filled and replenished with new life, new bram, 
bone, and muscle. 

It is not wholly so with the spiritual army of the 
reserve. This, too, is tramed and strengthened by strug- 
gle and suffering : but, in this, every accretion of power 
is permanent ; every enlistment not only for the cam- 
paign of life, but for the life everlasting. It is a beauti- 
ful doctrme, which the study of the human mind tends 
more and more to confhm, that knowledge, once gained, 
is never lost ; that we never reaUy forget ; that what we 
call imperfection of memory is but a defect in the mate- 
rial instrument, some mist or dulness in the mhror which 
reflects the beam of light. It is a beautiful doctrine, but 
a fearful one ; suggestmg the questions, What knowledges 
have we garnered in this everlasting storehouse ? on what 
spiritual breads have we fed, that have thus entered into 
the very substance and framework of our being ? what 
unfading pictures have been frescoed on the ever-endur- 
mg walls of the soul ? 

It is, I trust, scarcely necessary to suggest, that though 
oiu- sphitual powers enlarge by use, and are nurtured 
by effort and struggle, there are limits to the law ; that 
they do not grow by over- work ; that the bow must not 
always be bent, and never strained. I have no faith in 
working with jaded powers, or m holdmg up, as cxcm- 

16 



122 THE ARMY OF THE RESERVE. 

plars to the young, the men who give their nights as well 
as days to study. 

" And wherefore does the student trim his lamp, 
And watch his lonely taper, when the stars 
Are holding their high festival in heaven, 
And worshipping around the midnight throne ? " 

The just and sensible answer to this glowing question 
is, Because he don't know any better ; because he don't 
understand, or care to recognize and obey, the laws of his 
spu'itual as well as physical health and life. It were far 
better for him to be uifolded in the arms of '• Xatiu-e's 
sweet restorer, gentle sleep." 

In a busy life, we cannot measure oiu' daily work by 
exact rules. The true rule is, to work much, not many 
hours. More work must be done on one day than an- 
other : but eight hours of mental labor is enough for the 
most vigorous constitution ; more than most men can do 
with safety. lie who seeks to do more must often brmg 
to his work a fiaggmg brain ; or if he be of the class, who, 
when they work, must work with mtensity, break, not 
indeed his sphit vital m every part, but the material 
instruments by which it works. 

No b(>tter illustration of these truths can be found 
than in New iMigland's most accomplished advocate. 

Of brilliant powers, enriched by wide and varied cid- 
ture ; ol" lapid pcrccplions ; of retenti\c> and capacious 
memory; ol rich. Lilowiiiir, Orimital imairination ; of a 
quiet and sul)tle wit. whose delicate aroma it is in vain to 
hope to i)reser\(' ; with tliat ])rojectile force of mind 
wliicli is tlie ])eculiar trait of a Ljreat advocate ; with a 
lo^nc keen and vig(n()iis, thoii^^h, like the dagger of liar- 



THE ARMY OF THE RESERVE. 123 

modius, it was often hidden beneath the myrtles ; with a 
heart gentle as a woman's, yet capable of stiffening its 
sinews ; with Httle inclhiation to social life, yet the most 
delightful of companions, — IVIi". Choate was, at the bar 
or in his own library, the most interesting man it has been 
my privilege to know : yet, during the last six years of 
his life (and it was dimng those years I saw him most 
frequently), I never heard him, even in the most brilliant 
of his efforts, without a feelhig of sadness. He not only 
worked too much, but he had no just economy of labor. 
He did a thousand things which men of narrower capa- 
city might have done as well, or Avell enough. He ex- 
pended upon his work a vast amount of superfluous 
strength. He brought the whole army of the reserve 
into action, when the victory might have been easily and 
gracefully won by the van and corps of battle. If he had 
tried half as many causes, worked half as many hours, 
he would have been a yet greater man, and his life might 
have been spared to the coiu'ts of which he was the pride 
and ornament ; nay, more, those large and generous 
powers might have been used upon a broader theatre, 
and for nobler and more enduring service. As it was, we 
may write upon his monument the inscription upon the 
bust of Erskuie at Holland House : — 

" Nostrse eloquentise forensis facile princeps." 

Pardon one or two practical suggestions. 

We all need this reserved power ; but it comes only 
from the union of contemplation and action. Our life is 
sth, bustle, everlasting motion ; the whistle of the engine, 
the click of the telegraph. 



124: THE ARMY OF THE RESERVE. 

" We pry not into the interior ; but, like the martlet, 
Build in the weather, on the outward wall. 
Even in the force and road of casualty." 

The business of life should be so conducted as to gi\e 
us time for quiet study and n Station. The best pro- 
cesses of culture must be perfected in our own libraries, 
Mitli patient toil and thought. 

The mind requh'es not only diversity of discipline, but 
generosity of diet. It will not grow to full, well-rounded 
l)roportions and robust strength upon any one aliment. 

There is no profession or pursuit in life, which, fol- 
lowed with exclusive devotion, will not narrow and con- 
tract the mind. 

Philanthropy is a good thing ; but, if a man lives upon 
it, it sours the milk, and ciu'cUes the blood, till thv love of 
the race becomes the hatred of every man and woman 
that compose it. 

Theology is a good thing ; but, if a man fed upon that 
only, his bones would cleave to his skin. The teacher 
of it must, by constant reading and study, replenish the 
cxliaustcd fountains of tlionght. It is the spider only 
that weaves from his own entrails, and he wc^aves in 
circles. The writer without sucli refreslunc>nt is tlie 
constant repetition of himself; the tuniiug of the wheel 
uj)()n its own axis; incessant motion. l)ut no ])rogress ; 
tlic tr;i\clliiiii: ill the siiiiie old ruts witli the old •• one-hoss 
sliay." 

'I'lic law is a good tiling; but no man can b(^ a great 
biwNcr who knows nothing ols(>. The study and ])ra('tice 
of the law tend to acnincn iMtlicr than hreadth. to sub- 
tlety rather than strength. Tiie air is tliin among the 



THE ARMY OF THE RESERVE. 125 

apices of the law, as on the granite needles of the Alps. 
AYe must come down for refreshment and strength to the 
quiet valleys at their feet. 

Pope was wrong. The Ovid was not in Murray lost. 
Lord Mansfield was the greater lawyer and judge, be- 
cause the Ovid grew and was developed in him. Yoi his 
comprehensive grasp of great principles, for those large 
constructive powers by which he built up the modern 
commercial law of England, for the beauty and crystal 
clearness of his style, we are mdebted, m no small de- 
gree, to his wide and varied culture. 

The law is not a " jealous mistress : " she is a very 
sensible mistress. She does not object to an evening 
with the Muses or the Graces, provided we do not remain 
into the small hours of the morning. The farewell of 
Blackstone to his Muse is unnecessarily pathetic. The 
confused air and shuffling gait with which he takes his 
leave of her ladyship indicate that the relations were not 
very intimate or confidential. He was in no danger. 

Commerce is a noble tiling. The pioneer of civiliza- 
tion, the diplomatist of peace, " her Ime is gone out 
through all the earth, and her words to the end of the 
world." But a man cannot hve upon the bread of traffic 
only. He needs a yet higher commerce (to modify the 
thought of Bacon) ; the unfreightmg of those ships that 
come down to us through the vast seas of time, laden 
with the wisdom of ages. 

The country must have its reserved power. It con- 
sists, not in wider dominion, in material progress, in 
wealth, in luxmy, in the subjection of nature to the mind 
and will of man. These but enlarge the theatre of 



126 THE ARMY OF THE RESERVE. 

human passions and interests : the actors and the drama 
remain the same. 

Have we no reason to fear, that, in subduing the eartli, 
the earth has, to some extent, subdued us ; that, while 
mmd has mastered matter, it has also worshipped it ; that 
we have given our hearts to the idols which our cunning 
fingers have moulded ; that ours has become the condi- 
tion of Faust, when he summoned to his presence the 
spirit of the earth, and felt, at first, his energies exalted 
and glowing as with new wme, but found he could not 
mate himself with the spirit he had evoked, and, in liis 
despair, exclaimed, " If I had the power to draw thee to 
me, I have no power to hold thee " ? 

Our strength, our reserved power, is in our fidelity to 
the principles on which these States were founded, in 
which their youth was nurtiu'cd, by which they were 
ripened together into one national life ; loyalty to free- 
dom, obedience to law, then,, now, and for ever, one and 
inseparable. 

The founders of the Republic did not believe that 
government was merely moral suasion ; that liberty was 
the absence of wholesome restraint ; that hn\ s were to be 
obeyed only when obedience was agreeable ; the country 
to he defended and saved only when the subject should 
\ oliiiitccr ; tli;il the ( 'oust itutiou was to be suprcMiie only 
Avlicii it was coiiNcniriit ; the I'liion a iiicrc silken string, 
from which States niii^^ht be slip])ed bv secession or 
scxcrcd by treason. Xo enduring fal)ri(' can rest on such 
(loL,nnas. 'I'he roots ol' cJNil L;;o\('riunenl strik(> dee]), and 
find nntrinient and snpport in llu' depths oC the Divine 
W ill. kaw is a sword as well as a shield; there is no 



THE ARMY OF THE RESERVE. 127 

liberty but within its pale : the defence of the country, 
at the cost of treasure or of life, is the fii'st of ci\il 
duties ; the Constitution, in war as in peace, is the 
supreme law, the bond of equal States, inseparable, 
without limit of time, immutable except in the mode 
itself points out. 

These plain principles, now somewhat old-fashioned, 
not to say obsolete, make up for the country its moral 
army of the reserve. 

Brethren, this dear country of ours is in extreme peril. 
For her succor and deliverance, she needs all your wis- 
dom and all your strength, the counsels of age, the 
vigor of manhood, the flower of youth. God of oiu* 
fathers, ghd us for the work : by tribulation and suffer- 
ing, by this baptism of fire and of blood, pm'ify and gird 
us for the work of her salvation. God of our fathers, 
we can save her, and we will. Redeemed, purified, 
plucked as a brand from the burning, we will give her 
once more to thy ser\TLce, in which alone is perfect 
freedom. 



128 



SPEECH AT CHELSEA. 



October 31, 18G2. 



Fellow-Citizens, — An important election is at liand. 
No thonghtful man ever casts a vote witliont iinpiii y as 
to his duty. At a time like this, he is painfully anxious. 
He feels he cannot use it to gratify personal or party 
predilections ; that it belongs to the comitry, and must 
be so given as best to serve her interests. For eighteen 
months we had been engaged in a civil war, whose 
extent, whose intense bitterness, whose consumption of 
treasure and of most precious blood, have no parallel in 
history. The struggle was tasking to the uttermost the 
resources of the loyal States. The people believed 
the war was just and necessary. They saw no hope 
for the country but in its vigorous ])rosecution. They 
li;i(l been i:;ric>\()usly disap])()iiit('(l l)y tlie want of pro- 
gress in suppressing the liebellion. They were mortitied 
and cliagrined- by disasters and defeats, followed by 
lame and impotent aj)ologies. They were disgusted 
by tbe frauds of contractors, the jealousies of command- 
ers, tb(^ selfishness of j)()Hticians, tlie want of unity, 
method, and persistent \igoi- in tlie pnblic eonnsc^ls. ^^ itli 
the i)resence e\er\\\liere of j)oliti(ians iind ollice-hold- 
ers, uncliastened b\ the ]tublic calamities, ol)truding n|»on 
tlie liXeeutive couiu ils. ilielatinL:: to ("onii^ress, meddlinii; 



SPEECH AT CHELSEA. 129 

with the command and direction of the armies, seeking 
to control the elections, growing fat upon the public dis- 
tresses. Many of them were grieved and alarmed at the 
absence of respect, to use no harsh word, manifested 
by some of their servants for the ancient and sacred 
muniments of personal liberty ; without which, free 
government is a mockery, and life itself a burden. Hope 
deferred was making the heart sick. In that day of dis- 
traction and anxiety and thick gloom, one thing seemed 
to be as clear as the sun at mid-day ; and that was, the 
necessity of an united North ; that all its wisdom, all its 
energy, all its strength, should be combined, converged, 
projected into one purpose, one issue, one aim, — the 
suppression of armed rebellion by force of arms. 

As this was a common cause, infinitely transcending 
all party questions, with which Repubhcan, ^^^hig, and 
Democrat were alike concerned ; for which, justice com- 
pels us to say, they had made equal sacrifices, and must 
share equal bui'dens ; as the peculiar objects for which 
the party in power had been organized were already 
attained by the legislation of Congress ; no sound, sub- 
stantial reason existed for upholdmg the old party bar- 
riers, or drawmg, with any rigor, the old party lines. On 
the other hand, patriotism and sound policy seemed to 
require that party organizations should, dming the war 
at least, be given up ; for these organizations, though 
often the residt of difi"erences of opinion, are as often 
the cause. When men are working together for a com- 
mon end, and with no visible line of separation, they 
will converge, assimilate, and cleave together. Make a 
breach between them which is palpable, and, however 

17 



130 SPEECH AT CHELSEA. 

narrow at first, it will constantly widen. Differences, 
slight at the start, will enlarge by conflict and repulsion, 
till unity of action and effort arc no longer practicable. 

The Kepublican party has had, and has now, the as- 
cendency in this Commonwealth. It was inclined at fu*st 
to piu'sue a liberal policy. It would to-day, if its wise 
and prudent men controlled its movements. It is made 
up of two wings. The first consists of those who are 
opposed to slavery ; who desire to see its restriction with- 
in its present limits, and its removal from places where 
the power of the National Government is supreme ; but 
who also hold, " that the maintenance inviolate of the 
rights of the States, and especially the right of each 
State to order and control its own domestic institutions 
accordmg to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to 
that balance of powers on which the perfection and en- 
durance of our political fabric depends " (Chicago Plat- 
form) ; and that the war is prosecuted " for the piu-pose 
of practically restoring the constitutional relations be- 
tween the United States and eacli of the States and the 
people thereof, in which States that relation is or may be 
suspended or (hsturbed" (President's Proclamation of 
Sept. 22) ; and tliat, wlion this object is attained. \\\c war 
ought to ceas(\ This is the Conservative wing. 

Tiie other wing consists of those, who, for want of a 
better ^^()l•(i. nia\ be called Ai)olit ioiiists ; men A\bo. with 
more or less indirection, circuitous navigration of tboni-lit 
and word, come at last to tbe ])oint. that Constitution or 
no ( 'onstitnlion. I'nion or no I nion. endure the A\ar as 
lung as it may, be tbe cost and (•arnai;-e and exliaustiou 
what they may, slavery shall be aboli.shed. This wing 



SPEECH AT CHELSEA, 131 

of the party is now in the ascendant, and rules the party 
with a rod of iron. They arranged and controlled the 
Annual Convention. They saw to it that no man was 
nominated who did not embrace their extreme views, 
though they were kmd enough to include some very 
recent converts. They covered their leaders with adula- 
tion thicker than a man's loins, and snubbed the Presi- 
dent of the United States because their platform was too 
narrow for him to stand upon. They made the test of 
loyalty, fidelity to men, instead of devotion to the country. 
This wing of the party arranges and controls all the pre- 
liminary meetings, sets in motion all the party machinery, 
and makes all the party nominations. So far as its power 
extends, not a man, holding what are usually termed 
conservative views, will be elected to any place, state or 
national. Never was proscription so rigid, so bitter, so 
universal. They go now one step further. Assuming 
that the President has at last yielded to their pressure, 
and has adopted their policy, they denounce as a traitor 
every man who hesitates as to the wisdom of the pro- 
clamation, or who fails to give it their mterpretation. 
Without stopping to murmur or complain, one may be 
permitted to say, that such charges come with little 
grace from men, who, but a few weeks ago, felt the 
defence of the country, under the then policy, to be a 
heavy draft upon their patriotism ; with still less grace 
from those of them who have for years been labormg to 
destroy the blessed Union of our fathers, and who even 
now repudiate it with hissing and scorn. 

In this condition of things, the severance of political 
associations is natural, is perhaps inevitable. The differ- 



132 SPEECH AT CHELSEA. 

ences of principle and of policy are too great to be 
reconciled. The Radicals, upon their ovra showing, 
neither want nor need our aid. AVe, tlie Conservatives, 
must be true to oiu- convictions of duty, and stand to the 
last by the Union and Constitution. But, while these dif- 
ferences of opinion and policy exist, we can unite in the 
vigorous prosecution of this war till the rebels lay down 
their arms, whoever shall constitute the National and 
State administrations. We can give them a vigorous 
and unhesitating sujjport in the discharge of this great 
and imjjeratlve dutij. We can and should avoid all cap- 
tious opposition or criticism ; but we may not and will 
not surrender our judgments or oiu' consciences. We 
will not forget who are the servants, and Avho the mas- 
ters. We will elect, if we can, to places of power, men 
who reflect our opinions. AVe will send men to Con- 
gress who will sustain the Administration ui all constitu- 
tional and just measures, and hold them back, if possible, 
from a radical and destructive policy. AVe don't projiose 
to rehabilitate the doctrine of passive obedience, or of an 
infalUble political church. /// ir<i)\<if< hi peace^ freedom 
of thought and utterance is /o the Ixx/i/ politic irhai 
vital air Is to thv laniKUt si/stem. If caiuiot lire trlfh- 
out It. 

I am one oi" those who arc coiitciit with the Constitu- 
tion as it is. iind the I'uiou as it was ; the Constitution 
fiirlv iut('r|)ri't('(l iu the spiiit of its f'ouudors. 1 lia\e 
felt uo inisgi\ iiiL^s. ;nui had uo uicntal r(*s(M\ atious. iu 
swcariug to sujjport it. 'l"o nic the oath ^^as {\\v pledge, 
not ot" (hitv luercly. l)ut of Ionc aud dcNotiou. I mean 
to keep that oath ; aud, w ith such strength as may be 



SPEECH AT CHELSEA. 133 

given me, to uphold and defend that Constitution, be- 
cause the life of the nation is bound up in it ; because 
the preservation of the Constitution, and the preservation 
of the Union, are not two questions, but one question ; 
are not two issues, but one and the same issue. I have 
lived half a centiu-y without discovering or suspecting 
that the " Constitution was a failure." On the other 
hand, I have ever regarded it as the noblest product of 
the human mind ; the work of men chastened by adver- 
sity, disciplined by trial; in their conscious weakness, 
seeking the Divine Strength ; belie\dng that God governs 
in the affau's of men ; assured that, " except the Lord 
build the house, they labor in vain who build it." That 
Constitution has given us a Government felt only hi its 
blessings ; mider whose benign and quickenmg influences 
the nation sprung up to greatness, her commerce whiten- 
mg every sea, the stars on her banner kindled by the 
light of a never-setting smi ; a model Repubhc, which 
won for itself the homage and admiration of mankind, — 
the fear of kings, to struggling humanity, insphation 
and hope. It is very easy to say the Constitution is not 
perfect. I am not "wise enough to build a better, and do 
not know the men who are. It is easy to express regret 
at what are called its compromises. You may as weU 
regret it was ever made. All government is compromise, 
save as it is rooted in the Divine WiU. Social order is 
mutual concession. The Constitution was the best com- 
promise that could be made ; and the experience of more 
than seventy years has not taught us how to make a 
wiser one. 

That Constitution is the bond of national unity. Re- 



13-i SPEECH AT CHELSEA. 

bellion, under the guise of Secession, sought to sever 
the bond, to cut the thread of the national life. We 
grasped the sword to vmdicate the Constitution, to save 
the national unity. Xever was the sword drawn in a 
holier cause. Xever was a war more just or more 
strictly defensive. It was not only the sacred right and 
duty of government to wage it, but the necessity of its 
being, llidt rlrjht^ in its length and its breadth^ is the 
rif/Iif to enforce the laws. Within the 2^o.le of the Con- 
stitution, States and j^^ople may he held to obedience. 
Outside of thatixile, the whole struggle is revolutionary. 
I put the plain question to every honest conscience. How 
can I, by force of arms, by fire, and the sword, compel 
obedience to a law I do not respect myself ? How can I 
"vdndicate the law with the sword in my right hand, and 
break it witli the hammer in my left { Xo subtlety of 
logic, no refinement of casuistry, can evade or conceal 
the answer. The right of revolution remains intact ; 
but this Government has never |)roteii(k'd tliat it was 
waging a war of revolution. Its claiiu. tluis i'ar. has 
been to wage a \var muh r tlie Constitution for the Con- 
stitution. This j)lain ^iew of the struggle I have taken 
from the beginning, 'i'he })rogress of events has served 
to dce])en my conviction of its soundness. I never 
doubled that the ( 'oust it ut ion clotlu'd the (io\eruuuMit 
with all ])()\\('rs necessary to the ctliciout pi'osiM-utiou of 
the war. I ucNcr doubted that tidelity to that Constitu- 
liou was our safety and slreu^-lh. aiul that l'^■tn•v way that 
(liNcii^ed iVoiu it was the wa\ to death. 

Tiu' coiuuMiu luode of argunieut is to assuuie that a 
certain policy is ni'cessary, and then to inter that it is 



SPEECH AT CHELSEA. 135 

within the Constitution. Take, for example, the policy 
of confiscating the property of non-combatants, outside of 
the conflict of arms, and without conviction of the owner. 
The measure is, in my judgment, in direct conflict with 
the Constitution ; but it is also in conflict with the law of 
nations, and with every principle of justice and human- 
ity. The judgment and conscience of every Christian 
nation condemn it. Such a law is not a source of 
strength, but of weakness. With all deference to the 
judgment of others, I feel it my duty to say, that the un- 
constitutional measures passed or proposed by the Radical 
party in Congress have done as much to protract the war 
as all the treasure that has been spent, and all the blood 
that has been shed, have done to end it. They shook 
the public faith and confidence. Men cannot be taught 
to understand, that, in enforcing the law, it is necessary to 
break it ; or, in upholding the Constitution, it is necessary 
to violate it. These measures weakened our cause in the 
Border States, which every practical man has seen, from 
the begimiing, to be the battle-ground of this contest ; 
retaining which, our ultimate triumph was almost cer- 
tain ; losmg which, there was no solid ground of hope 
for the Union. The policy, moreover, cost us the few 
friends we had in the rebel States. It kmdled into 
greater intensity the hatred of the foe, and nerved him 
to a yet more desperate and bitter struggle. It divided 
the pubHc sentiment of the North, and wounded the 
Government in the house of its friends. My policy in 
this struggle is the vigorous prosecution of the war, with 
careful adherence to the Constitution, and the maxims of 
moderation and humanity with which civilization and 



136 SPEECH AT CHELSEA. 

Christianity have tempered the ancient iron rules of war. 
Whenever decisive victories are achieved, I would issue 
a general proclamation of amnesty and pardon, except- 
ing only a few of the leaders most deeply steeped in 
guilt. Under all chcumstances, I would chng to the 
Constitution, as the l)ond of unity in the past, as the only 
practical bond of Union in the future ; the only land 
lifted above the waters on which the ark of I'nion can 
be moored. From that ark alone will go out the l)o^'e 
blessed of the Spirit, which shall return brmging in its 
mouth the olive branch of peace. 

The policy of the Abolitionists is expressed in the 
phrase, the Union as it should be, or the Union with- 
out slavery. No policy could be more attractive. But 
let us probe the words, and get at the depth of their 
meanmg. An Union without shivery impHcs not merely 
that the slaves in rehd States shall be emancipated, 
and in the Border loyal States ; but that the States shall 
be deprived of the })Ower of upholding slavery, now or 
in the future. The emancipation of slaves wow in tlife 
rebel States would be but one step in the process. To 
abolish slavery by tlio ]-)owrr of the National Govern- 
ment involves a fuiulaiueiital chaugi' in the Constitution 
of the United States, by force of which '■ the ri^lit of each 
State to order and control its own domestic institntions, 
uccordini^ to its own jndu;incnt," is taken a\va\ ; a right 
wliicli the Rcpnhhcan i)art\ has (leclarinl '• iras issijt/id/ 
to lluil hdlmicc ()/ jioiiu rs (t/t ir/iich (he jxr/'a-fio/i and 
viahwancv of oar jto/i/ica/ /'((/u'ic (Icjxuds." 'I'liis ])ower 
of the State to regulate its internal ])olic(> and domestic 
institutions is a \ital, e^-^entiai (eature of our ci\il politN. 



SPEECH AT CHELSEA. 137 

If it may be taken from the States to abolish slavery, it 
may be taken from them for any pm-pose. It is a ques- 
tion of power, and not merely of its use. The change 
involved is a change in the whole structure of the Gov- 
ernment. The States and the union of States are gone. 
The result is, one State, one vast central power, a repub- 
lic in name only. This fundamental change in our sys- 
tem of Government is to be wrought by the power of the 
sword, without action of States or people. This is 
the inauguration of a war of revolution wholly outside 
of the Constitution ; a war, practically, for the enthe sub- 
jugation and permanent conquest of fifteen States: for 
an attempt to destroy slavery by a revolution will unite 
the entire South against it. These fifteen States must 
be reduced to military colonies, and held in subjection by 
vast standmg armies and by vast navies. If the thing 
were practicable, it would be at the cost of national ex- 
haustion and the loss of om- own freedom. You cannot 
maintain your conquest over fifteen subject States, cover- 
ing so vast a territory, except by a military despotism. 
But the thing is impracticable. Every dollar spent for 
such a conquest would be wasted ; every drop of blood 
shed for it would be spilt on the ground. The talk of a 
war of utter extermination is mere passion, which reason 
and conscience ahke condemn. The only war the peo- 
ple desire is a war of restoration. If we go beyond this, 
we embark on a sea of strife and blood, without chart or 
compass ; a war of vengeance and hate, of carnage and 
desolation, physical and moral, compared with which, all 
we have seen in the war thus far are mmistrations of 
mercy. 

18 



138 SPEECH AT CHELSEA. 

Let me not be misunderstood. It is my firm con\ic- 
tion, that, in the prosecution of this war, the power of 
slavery Avill be broken ; if the w^ar shall be prolonged, 
utterly broken. Practically, the question of emancipa- 
tion is one of j^ossesslo pedis. The Union army will 
not leave slavery behmd it. Emancipation Avill not pre- 
cede, but follow in its footsteps. 

Ponder on these things, fellow-citizens. Stand by the 
Constitution ; stand by the Union ; stand by their glorious 
emblem, the banner of our love and pride. Give your- 
selves freely to the service of your country. The 
thought of her is m every heart, and on every lip ; breaks 
into prayer, melts mto tears, kindles into flame ; the last 
thought at night, the first thought of morning: our 
country, perplexed, but not in despair ; cast down, but 
not destroyed ; wrestling with adversity, as Jacob with 
the angel, to wring from it its blessing ; veiled and 
eclipsed as tlie sun, to come forth again with life 
and light and liealmg ui its beams. Fellow-citizens, at 
an hour of such extreme peril as this, principles are 
every thing ; parties and individuals, nothing. I liavc not 
taken, for many years, an active ])art in politics. My 
judicial position forbade it. I have had no direction of 
the " Peo]ile's " movement ; but I believe it had its origin 
in dissatisfaction with tlie existing condition of ])ul)lic 
affairs, in a ii;ilui';il and wise dread of any atf('ni|it to 
cliaiiL:;!' llic objects ;iii(l piirpo'^es of" the \\ar. and in dis- 
trust of political cli(|iies who ha\(' used the ])arty in 
power lor their own ends, and not for the country's. L 
cordiallv aj)pro\(' ol the s|)irit and general ohj(>cts of this 
movement, i know well, and respect and honor, gentle- 



SPEECH AT CHELSEA. 139 

men connected with it. I believe their apparent objects 
are thek' real objects. Truer men, more loyal and patri- 
otic, are not found in the Commonwealth. 

They are conservative in their views ; but they are in 
favor of the vigorous prosecution of the war, of main- 
tainmg the nation's unity at every cost, and of cordially 
upholding the President in the discharge of his great and 
difficult duties. They cling with tenacity and unfalter- 
ing devotion to the Union and the Constitution of their 
fathers. Mistakes have doubtless been made ; mistakes 
especially which show an ignorance of pohtical machi- 
nery and management. 

" Where ignorance is bliss, 
'Tis folly to be wise." 

It is my fii'm conviction, that the certain result of the 
rigid, proscriptive, partisan policy adopted by the Re- 
publican Convention, especially if followed up by the 
charge of treason agamst all who dissent from it, is a 
divided North ; divided not as to the duty of suppressing 
the Rebellion, but so divided in feeling and pohcy as to 
render efficient co-operation impracticable. I pray you, 
my Republican friends, to listen to the voices that come 
to us from the Great West, and to be tolerant and just. 
The men of Massachusetts cannot be driven. They will 
practise forbearance for their country's sake, but not 
for ever. 

To what condition of thmgs have we come, fellow- 
citizens, when such a man as Josiah G. Abbott can be 
denounced as a traitor, and this, too, as he stands by the 
fresh-made grave of a son, dearly beloved ; one of three 
given to the service of his country ? I know him well. 



140 SPEECH AT CHELSEA. 

A man better qualified to represent you cannot be found 
in the district ; and it is one of strong men. He is a 
very able Jawyer ; and great questions of law will have 
to be settled by the next Congress. He is a man of 
thoroughly practical mind, of large common sense, of ex- 
tensive knowledge of men and business. He is a patriot 
through and through, from the crown of his head to the 
sole of his foot. 

Nor can any charity excuse or paUiate the gross attacks 
made upon the accomplished and gallant standard-bearer 
of this movement.* A leader at one of the ablest bars of 
the State, respected and beloved by his brethren, at the 
first call of his country he gave himself to her service. 
Begimiing the war as major of a battalion, he has been 
successively appomted colonel, brigadier-general, and has 
now command of a division. His courage and gallantry 
have been tested ; his ability is unquestioned, his cha- 
racter without reproach. How Christian gentlemen can 
denounce such men as traitors, it is difficult for a plam 
man to comprehend. 

• Gen. Charles Devens. 



141 



REMARKS ON THE BORDER STATES. 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JAN. 8, 1803. 



The House being in Committee of the Whole, and having under 
consideration the Appropriation Bill, Mr. Thomas said, — 

Mr. Chairmai^, — I beg to call the attention of the 
Committee back to the precise matter before us. It is 
a provision for the appropriation of money for a definite 
and specific purpose : that purpose is, to enforce the col- 
lection of a direct tax assessed by Congress in conformity 
to a provision of the Constitution of the United States 
(art. 1, sect. 2, clause 4); a tax which could only have 
been assessed m exact conformity to that provision. 
The object of this provision in the appropriation bill, 
and of the law of the last session, is to enforce, m the 
disaflfected States, the collection of the tax. Upon what 
ground, Mr. Chahman, are we seeking to enforce this 
tax in the " seceded " States ? Upon the obvious ground, 
that the authority of this Government at this time is as 
valid over those States as it was before the acts of seces- 
sion were passed ; upon the ground, that every act of 
secession passed by those States is utterly nuU and void ; 
upon the ground, that an act legally null and void cannot 
acquire force, because armed rebellion is behind it, seek- 
ing to uphold it ; upon the ground, that the Constitution 
makes us, not a mere confederacy, but a nation ; upon 



142 REMARKS ON THE BORDER STATES. 

the ground, that the provisions of that Constitution strike 
through the State government, and reach dhectly, not 
intermediately, the subjects of the United States. 

Gentlemen say that there is a belligerent power exer- 
cising authority against us. That is, you say that rebel- 
lion is attemptmg revolution. Very well. Who ever 
heard, as a matter of public law, that the authority of a 
government over its rebellious subjects was lost imtil that 
revolution was successful, was a fact accomplished ? 
That day, I pray God, I may not hve to see. 

My position, then, Mr. Chairman, is, that we may 
enforce the collection of this tax, because to-day, as here- 
tofore, the authority of the National Government binds 
and covers every inch of the national domain ; because 
that law, which we call the Constitution, is, to-day, the 
supreme law of the land. If the position taken by 
the learned gentleman from Pennsylvania []\Ir. Stevens] 
be true, that we are every day passmg unconstitutional 
acts, we are every day violatmg our oaths to support the 
Constitution of the United vStates. I beg leave to say, 
that, however we may differ as to the extent of powers 
which the Constitution giACS us (and they are ample for 
all good ends), wlicn we deliberately ])ass from fidelity to 
this Constitution, to enact laws in ^ iolation of its sacred 
provisions, we are ourselves inaugiu'ating rcAolution. It 
is fire against fire, revolution against revolution ; and (lod 
have mercy on the ((Hinlrv I In all cMMits. at whatever 
cost or peril of treasure or of" lil"(>. we must cling to the 
national unity ; and. for this (muI. we must cling to 
the onlv pos>il)l(' bond of nnitv. {\\v Constitution. 

1 havi' i)ut a woid more to say, Mr. Chairman. I have 



REMARKS ON THE BORDER STATES. 143 

listened quietly, but with great sorrow, to the attacks 
often made on the Republican side of the House against 
the gentlemen from the Border States. I desire to say, 
what I have often said, and repeat, with the fullest sense 
of my responsibility, that m fidehty to the Union and 
the Constitution, and every earnest effort to uphold them, 
there have been no truer, nobler, more devoted men 
than these representatives from the Border States. 
[Applause.] And the great heart of this country to-day 
goes out to meet them and to bless them. It is easy in 
New England (where fortunes are rapidly built up, and 
mdustry quickened, and material prosperity advanced, by 
this war), or in New York, or hi Pennsylvania, to be 
patriotic and loyal and national. These men have stood 
the touch of fire and the sword. They have been tried 
by suffering. No ties of natural affection, no love of 
kindred, no fear of desolation or death, has moved them ; 
not even your unkindness. I do not believe that it is 
policy or wisdom to alienate such men from us: we 
should rather grapple them with hooks of steel to our 
hearts. 

Say what you will, ^Ii*. Chairman, as a practical ques- 
tion, this war must be fought out in the Border States. 
They constitute the battle-ground of this contest to-day, 
as they have been from the beginning of the war. Can 
you hold the Border States to their allegiance ? If you 
can, the final victory is with us ; if you cannot, separa- 
tion is inevitable. I hope and trust and pray, Mr. Chair- 
man, that we shall hear no more of party discussions and 
wrangles ; no more reproaches thrown from the one side 
of the House to the other. We have no strength thus 



144 REMARKS ON THE BORDER STATES. 

to fritter away. God knows, we need a united people to 
save the Union, trembling, even now, on the verge of 
dissolution ; and therefore, if we cannot agree upon all 
questions of law, if we cannot agree upon all questions 
of policy, let us consent to differ as we best may, but 
with the firm resolve, that every thing of strength, of 
power, of purpose, of motive, of will, that is in us, sliall 
combine, concentrate, converge, to sa^e the national 
integrity, the national life. 

It has been said by the gentleman from Pcmisylvania, 
— and I will say a word on this, and rcheve your 
patience, — that there are those here who oppose the 
policy of the Administration. I suppose there is no man 
in this House who has more respect for the intellectual 
vigor and manliness of the gentleman from Pennsylvania 
pir. Stevens] than I have ; but I beg leave to call his 
attention to the fact, that he has not always been able 
to concur in the policy of this Administration. I beg 
leave to remind him of a difficult} A\liich has occurred 
to all members of the House, that it has sometimes been 
very difficult ibr v\cn a very careful and scrutuiizuig 
observer to know or find out what the policy of the 
Admiuistration is ; and we are obliged to grope our 
wav (laiklv tlierefore, aud determine for ourselves what 
ANill he for the ])eace and iuterest of tlie couutiy, and 
follow lliat. II" the Adiuiiiislratiou docs not clearly 
indicate its policv. w c may he exciised for not being 
alwavs I'onnd in its |i;ith ; and. wIhmi indicated, we may 
not follow it. il" tidclit\ to the ( 'onstitntion or the highest 
interests of the countrN forbid. 



145 



ON THE BILL "TO RAISE ADDITIONAL SOLDIERS 
FOR THE SERVICE OF THE GOVERNMENT." 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JAN. 31, 1863. 

I HAVE no desire, Mr. Speaker, to launch my bark 
upon the sea of this illimitable debate. My object in 
obtaining the floor last evening, was to present, in 
addition to a few remarks upon the bill before the 
House, some considerations concerning the relations of 
New England, and more especially what has been called 
the Puritanism of New England, to the Union. But I 
could not fail to see that this subject would be too remote 
from that immediately before the House. I propose, 
therefore, to confine myself to a few, I fear some- 
what desultory, suggestions upon the measure before 
us, and the policy which it involves. 

It seems to me, Mr. Speaker, that the discussion, 
thus far, has scarcely touched, much less carefully con- 
sidered, the special subject-matter before us. This bill 
proposes, as I understand it, to raise a new and large 
army from the men of African descent in this country. 
The amendment offered by the gentleman from Penn- 
sylvania [Mr. Stevens] to the original bill (the measure 
to be pressed) proposes to raise that army without limi- 
tation as to numbers ; without Hmitation as to the States, 
loyal or rebel, from which they are to be taken ; without 

19 



146 BILL TO RAISE ADDITIONAL SOLDIERS 

limitation as to the expense, because without limitation 
as to number ; without limitation as to the places where, 
or purposes for which, the army is to be used ; without 
limitation as to the discipline to which that army is to 
be subjected ; each and all of these matters resting 
solely in the discretion of the President of the United 
States. I believe that I shall have the concurrence of 
every member of this House, and of the gentleman 
from Pennsylvania [Mr. Stevens] among the rest, when 
I say, that this bill, in its new form, proposes to vest 
in the President of the United States a larger power 
and wider discretion than were ever reposed by Con- 
gress in the hands of one man, unless under our pre- 
vious legislation on the same subject. I am not here, 
Mr. Speaker, to raise the question, whether we may not 
wisely repose a large discretion in the Executive at 
a time like this. It is among the necessities of our 
condition, that a large discretion should be reposed in 
the Executive ; but it is the duty of Congress to see that 
no such extent of power is vested in the President, or 
any one else, that that power may be readily used, as 
all power is li:tl)l(' to be used, to defeat the ends for 
which it is gi^(•Il, to subvert instead of u])holding the 
laws. And this question is not one of the individual 
character of the officer, but of principle and policy. In 
what coiHlitioii of our affairs do wo propose to raise tliis 
new army ? 

If I understood rif^litly the chairman of the Com- 
mittee on Military Affairs, my friend from New York 
[Mr. Olin]. we have now in the field, or rather we liave 
ii])on tlie pay-rolls of tlie (lovernment, a million of 



FOR THE SERVICE OF THE GOVERNMENT. 147 

white men of the Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, or German races. 
This, no man can doubt, is a sufficient army for the pur- 
pose of suppressing this Rebellion, if this Rebellion can 
be subdued by physical power alone. I do not say how 
many of those men are engaged to-day in active service, 
in face of the enemy. There are, we are told, very 
large desertions from the army. There are vast num- 
bers now on your pay-rolls, capable of service, who are 
doing no service. But that must be, to a considerable ex- 
tent the fault of the administration of the army. It is the 
plain, obvious duty of the Government to see that these 
men, who are on your pay-rolls and capable of service, 
are rendering that service. With a million efficient 
men in the army and at work, and with our large and 
gallant navy, if it is practicable to conquer rebellion by 
arms, you have force adequate for the purpose; as 
large a force as we can hope to maintain and replenish 
without bankruptcy. 

We must look, Mr. Speaker, to the financial aspect 
of this question, the question of ways and means. I do 
not think the financial condition of this country has 
been truly presented ; or rather, I should say, fully pre- 
sented : for no gentleman, of course, could desire to 
present it otherwise than truly. If I understand the 
facts spread by the gentlemen of the Committee of 
Ways and Means before the country, in the speeches 
made on this floor, our national debt at the end of the 
next fiscal year will be at the least two thousand milHon 
dollars. By that debt is meant the Hquidated debt of 
the country. I would call the attention of the House 
to the fact, that the unliquidated debt of this coun- 



148 BILL TO RAISE ADDITIONAL SOLDIERS 

try, the debt for damages for the taking of property 
and the destruction of property by the military power 
in the prosecution of the war, upon any equitable or 
reasonable rule which this Congress or any other Con- 
gress may adopt in its adjustment, may reach as high as 
five hundred millions more. This may be possibly too 
large an estimate ; but gentlemen will see at once, that 
how large it may be, and whether it reaches this limit, 
must depend on the rule which Congress shall apply to 
the adjustment of those claims ; how w^idely the door 
is thrown open. If we admit not only all legal claims, 
but all claims that are equitable, in the ordinary sense 
of that word, and if the estimate also include pensions, 
I think I do not state the case too strongly when I say 
it would reach five hundred millions. 

Do not fail to observe one other fact of our financial 
condition ; and that is, that when you get the national 
debt of this country, liquidated and unliquidated, you do 
not reach the whole marrow of the thing. Your state, 
county, city, town, and parish debts all over this country, 
taken together, will make an aggregate approaching at 
least to lialf of the liquidated national debt at the end 
of tlie present fiscal year ; and when you combine these 
debts, the li(iwidated debt, the unliquidated debt, the 
liability for pensions, the State, county, city, and town 
debts, and consider also how much higher interest we 
an^ j)aying tlian tliat \Kii(\ by any other people, the fact 
will stare you in tlii^ faci-. that this nation, at tiie end of 
the next fiscal year, will he more heavily laden ^\ilh 
debt than any nation in Europe. 

Now, I make no complaint of this, Mr. Speaker. I 



FOR THE SERVICE OF THE GOVERNMENT. 14,9 

would not withhold nor give grudgingly even my last 
dollar to the prosecution of this righteous war ; right- 
eous, if prosecuted for the ends for which it was 
begun, — the noblest war this country could wage ; com- 
pared with which, the Revolution itself was not only 
on a small scale, but for ends less grand and moment- 
ous. I differ from some of my friends here as to the 
nature and object of this war. It is a pleasant thing to 
say this is a war for liberty. It sounds well ; it soothes 
the ear ; it stirs the blood : but it is not true. That is 
not the fundamental idea of this war. Liberty we have 
had, sometimes to license. The fundamental idea, the 
idea of highest moral dignity, in the prosecution of this 
war, is the upholding of civil order and law and the 
Constitution, which is the nation's supreme law, its 
bond of unity, and its breath of life ; the noblest pro- 
duct of human thought ; the framework of an empire 
capable of almost infinite expansion, in which central 
power was reconciled with local independence, the 
gentlest restraint with the highest security, the broadest 
equality with the firmest order, the amplest protection 
with the slightest burden. The thought of to-day is 
not liberty, as commonly understood, the absence of 
restraint ; but the law in which true liberty is enthroned 
and made possible. 

I repeat, Mr. Speaker, I do not groan under the 
burdens the country has been and will be called to bear 
in the just prosecution of the war. It may be (though 
that question is now one of history only), it may be, 
that, by early mutual restraint and by moderate counsels, 
the war might have been averted. But it was not 



150 BILL TO RAISE ADDITIONAL SOLDIERS 

begun by this Government. After the first shot at 
Sumter, it was an inevitable necessity, a war of self- 
defence. I am yet in favor of vigorously prosecuting 
the war until the ends for which it was instituted are 
attained, or their attainment clearly seen to be impos- 
sible. I am for prosecuting it by the use of all just 
means and instruments, all means and instruments 
which have the sanction of public law as it has been 
tempered by civilization and Christianity. 

But to the money aspect of the question : the bill, 
without disturbing the present army at all, without 
diminution of its numbers, authorizes the President of 
the United States to enlist one hundred thousand, or two 
hundred thousand, or three hundred thousand men of 
African descent ; and every new man you ])ut into your 
army, according to the estimates of intelligent gentle- 
men on the floor of this House, costs you from seven 
hundred to a thousand dollars ; and if you raise one 
hundred and fifty thousand men, as was proposed by 
the gentleman from Pennsylvania originally, you in- 
crease your expenses one liundred to oik^ hundred and 
fifty millions a year. 

Mr. Stevens. 'V\\c gentleman will allow me a word. 
I understand liini to say, that this bill proposes to raise 
an additional army, witliout any diminution in the nnm- 
bor of the present army. Now, tlio ])reanible to the 
bill wliicli 1 introduced stated expressly, that it was 
upon the ground, that, \Nitliin a few months, the terms 
ot enlistment of several hundred thousand ot" the troops 
now in the field would expire ; and this ])roposcs to 
suj)[ilv their ])laces. 



FOR THE SERVICE OF THE GOVERNMENT. 151 

Mr. Thomas. That was in the preamble of the 
original bill introduced by the gentleman from Pennsyl- 
vania ; but the bill reported as from the War Depart- 
ment, and now before the House, has no such provision. 
The authority vested in the President, according to his 
construction of our statutes, is to raise an army of a mil- 
lion men. I do not complain of that construction. 
There is no provision in this bill for the diminution of 
that number ; and that number is not to be diminished, 
at any rate, until June next. I may add, a bill has been 
introduced in the other end of the Capitol for the 
recruiting of this army, and supplying its losses. 

Mr. Speaker, let me now turn to another feature of 
this bill, the term of enlistment. It provides for the 
enlistment of men for a period of jive years. Why ^ye 
years 1 I think there is more significance in that word 
" five " in this bill than in all other words written in it. 
Its possible objects are not written. Do you mean to 
say to the country, that it is your expectation, your rea- 
sonable expectation, and the basis on which you propose 
to make enlistments for your army, that this war is to 
continue for a period of five years longer 1 Do you 
mean to say to the country, that on the vast scale on 
which the war is now prosecuted, and at the expense of 
treasure and of life at which it is prosecuted, you expect 
to carry it on for five years more ? If such be your 
expectation, it is just and manly to say so. If such be 
not your expectation, pray add nothing to the anxiety 
and alarm of the people. 

Mr. Speaker, if the object of this war is restoration, 
that involves a state of things, present or future, which 



152 BILL TO RAISE ADDITIONAL SOLDIERS 

M'ill soon be developed and felt. A war for restoration 
proceeds upon the ground, that you will find in the 
rebel States, as your army advances and protection is 
made possible, men who are ready to rally again under 
the blessed flag of the Union, and to return to their 
allegiance to the National Government. If that feeling 
exists, and is developed, certainly it will be developed 
before the lapse of five years ; never, indeed, by this 
instrumentality ; never ! But if the object of this war 
is not restoration ; if the purpose and object of this 
war are, as is sometimes declared in the heated and 
brilliant rhetoric of gentlemen on your left, subjuga- 
tion, extermination, the re-colonization of the whole 
rebel territory, then your term of enlistment is alto- 
gether too short, altogether too short. 

If, Mr. Speaker, the object be extermination, there 
is not one of these pages, snatched prematurely from 
his mother's arms or cradle, who will live to see the 
end. You have been waging the war two years, and 
yet the number of inhabitants in the rebel States to-day 
is larger than it was when the war was begun. You 
cannot, probably, if you would, and you would not if 
you could, carry on a war with a fierceness and severity 
that would destroy life as rapidly as it germinates. 
Men. in war vwu, will marry, and Monirii be givcMi in 
marriage; children will be born to them, and their 
mothers will hold them to their flowing breasts as the 
storm sweeps by. The angel of life will triumph over 
the angel of death. Such is the blessed economy of 
God. 'i'he extermination of eight millions of people, 
with the use of all onr powrr and all our resources, is 



FOR THE SERVICE OF THE GOVERNMENT. 153 

a moral and physical impossibility. Of this war, if it 
is carried on for extermination, neither you nor I, Mr. 
Speaker, may hope to see its close but in one way, to 
us the way of deepest humiliation, — the intervention 
of other nations to stay its ravages. "Who talks of a 
war of extermination is simply mad. 

I proceed, Mr. Speaker, to a consideration of the 
raaterial of which you propose to make up this army. 
If I understand myself, I entertain very little prejudice 
and no unkindness toward the colored race. I may 
believe, I do believe, as a matter of fact, that, in the 
sterner stuff, they are an inferior race ; in some of 
the gentler qualities, our superiors ; and, in my judg- 
ment, the moral condemnation of slavery is the sterner 
for that fact. I have more respect, or rather less aver- 
sion, hate, for Roman or Grecian slavery, which subdued 
equals to its service, not inferiors ; not men to whom 
Nature had not given equal power of self-reliance and 
self-protection. But I also believe, that as society now 
exists, where these races are brought together in num- 
bers approaching equality, the relations that will exist 
between them, will be, perhaps must be, to some extent, 
relation of dependence and pupilage on the one part, 
and government and protection on the other ; but not 
involving necessarily any feature of chattel slavery. 

Now, I do not enter into the philosophy of races. 
As a practical man, I take and deal with things as they 
are. Looking at the existing relations in different parts 
of the country between the two races, I believe, after 
much reflection and careful consideration, that as mat- 
ter of wisdom, for the good of both, and especially for 

20 



154 BILL TO RAISE ADDITIONAL SOLDIERS 

the permanent good of the colored race, we should not 
involve that race in this war if we can fairly avoid it. 
To some extent, and for valuable services, they have 
been and will be used ; but, in the policy of creating 
from them distinct and large armies, we shall lose more 
than we gain. They will fight by the side of their 
masters better than they will against them. This may 
seem strange at first blush ; but, the more you study the 
African character, the firmer will be your conviction of 
its soundness. The light which our history gives us is 
mainly of slaves fighting with their masters ; and the 
fact will be found to be, though not, of course, without 
its exceptions, that slaves are attached and devoted to 
their masters and their families, and will stand by 
them, and fight with and for them. 

I do not question that there arc men of color in this 
country capable of bearing arms and making good 
soldiers. There are men of talent and culture among 
them. I have heard a man of color in this country 
address a polished assembly with a beauty of style, and 
force of argument, which any gentleman on tlio lioor of 
this House miglit be content to ccpial ; which I should 
be glad to imitate. But, Mr. Speaker, groat questions 
of public policy are not determined rightly on excep- 
tional cases : tliey confirm ratlier tlian impair tlie rule. 
And no valuable judi^nuMit can be formed as to tlu> nsr- 
fulness of a negro army of a huiidrcd tlionsaiid men from 
tlic f ict that a hundred men here, or fifty men there, 
liad been used in the military service, and had hrvn 
used successfully. The practical (pu'stion is, taking 
one, two, or tluei' huiidinl thousand of escaped slaves 



FOR THE SERVICE OF THE GOVERNMENT. 155 

from the rebel and border States, what sort of material 
you have for an army, compared with the present 
material ? 

My friend from New York [Mr. Roscoe Conkling] has 
caused to be read some remarks of Alexander Hamilton 
on this subject. There is no statesman in our history 
for whom I have a profounder respect ; but I have no 
confidence in the views expressed as to the proper mate- 
rial of an army, as applied to the times in which we live, 
or the purposes for which the war is waged. The argu- 
ment proceeds on the ground, that the soldier is, to all 
practical intents and purposes, a machine. Mr. Speaker, 
the soldier of to-day is a thinking, or, if you will, " a 
calculating machine." Your army in the field, as the 
history of this war will signally illustrate, is valuable 
for your service just in the degree that it is intelligent ; 
just in the degree that your soldiers are capable of 
understanding and appreciating the duty which they 
have to perform, and the fealty which they owe to the 
Government ; just in the degree that the man within 
inspires and animates and nerves and presses onward 
the outer man ; just in the degree that he feels that this 
glorious country and beneficent Government are his 
country and his Government, the life-estate in him, 
the fee in his children. Suppose, for example (I hope 
my friend from Maine, listening to me, will take no 
off"ence}, you get a regiment of backwoodsmen of Maine, 
men inured to life in boreal airs, whose stalwart arms 
humble forests: you have an excellent regiment, be- 
cause the backwoodsmen of Maine are thinking, intelli- 
gent men, owning the country, and loving it. Take an 



156 BILL TO RAISE ADDITIONAL SOLDIERS 

equal number of young men from one of our cities, of 
culture and spirit and pride, and you would have at 
least as good soldiers. Nay, more : if you were to take 
these two bodies of men, and cross with them the Hocky 
Mountains, you would find that the young men from 
the city, of intelligence and sphit, would bear all the 
fatigues, privations, and hardships, as well as the stout- 
est woodmen ; " better," said to me one who had tried 
the experiment, — Capt. "Williams, of the Second Mas- 
sachusetts Regiment, one of the many noble offerings 
Massachusetts has freely laid on the altar of country, 

]Mr. Hamilton cites the authority of Frederick of 
Prussia, a great soldier and loose talker : yet we may 
concede, that, for many uses to which armies have been 
put, it were well to have them as near to machines as 
possible; the nearer the better. Stupidity might, to 
some extent, be compensated by unthinking obedience 
to the will of the commander. Such an army this 
country does not seek, and will not have. Create an 
army of three hundred thousand men, so stupid as to 
understand nothing of the purpose for which the war is 
prosecuted ; obedient, but obedient only to the will of 
a commander; mere "macliincs" in his hands; and 
they may be the readiest instruments to destroy what all 
good men are struggling to preserve. 

For one, !Mr. Speaker, I do not object to the enlist- 
ment of intelligent free mm of color, though I doubt 
whether they seek it. I am a citizen of a State which 
recognizes the substantial e([uality of all men before 
the law. I love and honor her for her fidelity to the 
cause of freedom, though I may sometimes fear " she 



FOR THE SERVICE OF THE GOVERNMENT. 157 

loves not wisely, but too well." I thank God, there is 
not a man treading the soil of Massachusetts who is not 
in all substantial legal rights my peer. The colored 
man of Massachusetts is as much a citizen of Massa- 
chusetts as I am. The question has been settled from 
our first Constitution. Nothing is clearer as matter of 
principle or of history ; nor has there ever been any 
decision of the courts of the United States that impairs 
his right. 

But, while I rejoice in the policy of Massachusetts 
toward the colored race, I do not assume to direct or 
control or curse the policy of other co-equal States. I 
am not unmindful of the fortunate condition, as to the 
colored race, in which the Revolution found us. I am 
not blind to the fact, that theh numbers were so small 
as not to constitute practically a disturbing element. I 
am grateful for these things : but I am not sure, that if 
a half or a third of our population had been of African 
descent, and our soil and its products and their labor 
congenial, we should have been so much wiser and 
better than our neighbors ; nor am I certain, that if we 
bordered on the slave States, and were exposed to the 
incoming of large numbers of black men, we should be 
so tolerant in our policy, though we should try to 
be just. 

I do not form my judgment from the relations that 
exist between the white and colored races in Massachu- 
setts, of those that must and should exist in States where 
the colored men constitute a large component part 
of the population ; nor do I form a judgment, from my 
knowledge of some respectable and intelligent colored 



158 BILL TO RAISE ADDITIONAL SOLDIERS 

people at home, what sort of an army could be made 
up of the slave population of the South. Congress 
must recognize and act upon facts as they are, and not 
as they would have them to be. It must make large 
allowance for the feelings and prejudices even of the 
present army ; yes, for the blind, unreasoning preju- 
dices and hostilities of color and of race. Other gene- 
rations may be wiser, better, more tolerant, than our 
own ; but we have to deal lolth oiir own. 

The friends of • this measure are very confident, 
they are rather used to being confident, that these 
black men, slaves or freed, will make good soldiers. I 
cannot aver with certainty, they will not ; but I can say, 
we have no satisfactory evidence that they will. I can 
say, that they lack the intelligence, the energy, and the 
self-reliance which characterize so largely our present 
army, and which all men have conceded to be the 
strength and effective power of that army. 

But suppose that the experiment you are to try is 
not successful. Suppose you raise an army of two or 
three hundred thousand iik ii of African descent, and 
you find that the capacity is not in tliem wliich free 
institutions have given to your white soldiers, the s])irit 
and habit of self-reliance and self-possession; and I 
may remark in passinij:. Mr. Speaker (I suppose there 
is no man in this Ilon^c who lias not Vwcd long cMion^li 
to have h'anicd it), that th(> great diticrcnce Ix^twoen 
men in this woild is tlie degree in \vhich they j)ossess 
theniseh IS, — their own jtowers and resources. Snp- 
])nse. I re|)eat. tliat \(inr e\i>eiiin(Mit sln)nld fail, and \()\\. 
ha\(' this ;ii-ni\ ol t\M» or three hunch'ed thon^and hhick 



FOR THE SERVICE OF THE GOVERNMENT. 159 

men on your hands : what will you do with them 1 If 
you have an army composed of the white citizens of 
the country, and the period of their service expires, 
they will return to the ordinary relations and avocations 
of life and business ; they will resume their former 
position in society. They are soldiers to-day : they are 
citizens to-morrow. But an army of two or three hun- 
dred thousand black men, freed slaves, to be disbanded, 
where shall they go ■? To what place and condition 
are they to be returned'? Of course, not to slavery. 
No man who has ever served under our flag, whether 
for a day or for an hour, can be made again a slave. 
Where, then, shall they go "? You may be willing to 
colonize them; but they may prefer not to be colonized. 
I wish some practical man, who is disposed to discuss 
these questions upon practical grounds, would tell me 
what disposition you would make of these men, if the 
experiment fails, as fail I believe it will ; or when their 
term of service has expired. 

Mr. Speaker, I have listened attentively to this debate. 
I think I may claim the merit, if I have no other, of 
being a very patient listener ; and it sometimes requires 
a patience which Job himself would envy. But every 
thing aff'ecting, ever so remotely, the destiny of the coun- 
try, is of painful interest now. I have, with pleasure 
for the most part, listened to this discussion. It has 
concerned great principles of policy and of conduct in 
the administration of our affairs. But I deeply regret 
to have seen the spirit of party so often invoked in this 
debate. It has no place in the presence of these great 
perils and great duties. The utmost freedom of discus- 



160 BILL TO RAISE ADDITIONAL SOLDIERS 

sion and of counsel, here and elsewhere, must be main- 
tained. Principles are vital ; party organizations or 
triumphs, individual hopes and aspirations, nothing. 
That party will wear the crown which shall do most to 
save the life of this nation, its unity, its liberty in law. 
No party can hope to triumph which is not faithful to 
these great aims ; unless the triumph of its policy and 
the ruin of the country shall be cotemporaneous. 

I heard with great sorrow the thoughtful and elo- 
quent speech of the gentleman from Kansas ; but I 
heard it with no surprise. It was but carrying out the 
principles laid down in his speech a year ago to their 
plainest and most logical conclusion. The principles 
were received with cordial sympathy and warmest wel- 
come by men who shrink from the conclusion as from 
the abyss of despair. lie and they rejected with scorn 
the old Union, any Union, with slave States. The only 
alternatives were revolution and permanent conquest of 
the entire South, or separation. The first is felt to be 
impossible ; and the gentleman from Kansas logically, 
and I have no doubt honestly, accepts the alternative. 
But the gentleman cannot fail to see that the question 
before the country to-day is, not separdflon or no, but 
dishde(jrat'ion or no ; that, the moment you sever the 
bond as to one State, you sever it as to the wli()h\ Xo 
man can say, if separation begins, where it will end, or 
where the division-line will ultimately fall. Our only 
safety has been and is in clinging to the I'nion as it 
was in fact, and still is dc jure ; the old linion, the 
blessed Union of our fathers. 

It has been clear to nio as the suii in lieaAcn and at 



FOR THE SERVICE OF THE GOVERNMENT. 161 

mid-day, that this was our only possible way of salva- 
tion. This old Constitution, spurned now by foot even 
of sciolist and charlatan, this stone the builders of 
" baseless fabrics " have rejected, must again become 
the head of the corner. I beseech and adjure statesmen 
at either end of the Capitol, at either end of the Ave- 
nue, to continue no policy, to enter upon none, which 
shall preclude the restoration of the Union, with the 
rights and powers of the States unimpaired ; the only 
Union now within the reach, even of hope. 

I regret deeply some of the measures of the Ad- 
ministration. I have earnestly, and with a depth of 
conviction which could find no adequate utterance, 
protested against them. The confiscation bill, the pro- 
clamations of Sept. 22d and 24th and Jan. 1st, power- 
less for good, have been, and will be, I fear, fruitful 
only of evil. 

The proclamation of Sept. 24th is in conflict with 
the august and sacred muniments of personal secu- 
rity, to which, for six centuries, the Anglo-Saxon 
mind and heart have clung as the gospel of civil free- 
dom. Every arrest made under it in the loyal and 
peaceful States serves only to strengthen the enemies of 
the Government, and to wound and grieve its friends. 
If they tried to say "Amen" to it, the amen would stick 
in their throats. Pray, let it sleep " the sleep that 
knows no waking." 

The proclamation of Jan. 1st will do less good or 
harm than its friends hoped or opponents feared. It is 
not thus that great wars are prosecuted or great ends 
accomplished. However kind may have been the mo- 

21 



162 BILL TO RAISE ADDITIONAL SOLDIERS 

tives of those who begat and conceived it, it was still- 
born ; and no political galvanism can give to it the 
semblance of life. But though the Administration 
may adopt measures my judgment condemns, having 
attempted to stay them, and protested against them, I 
stand in the path of duty. This is my country to serve, 
my Government to obey, my Constitution to rescue and 
save, my Union, 

" Where I have garnered up my heart ; 
Where I must live, or bear no life." 

Amid all the darkness, the thick darkness, around us, I 
cling to the single, simple, sublime issue, the Constitu- 
tion, and the Union of which it is the bond ; the old 
Union. God bless the old Union, and the wrath of the 
Lamb of God shrivel to their very sockets the arms 
lifted to destroy it ; — not in vengeance, but in mercy 
to them and to all mankind ! 

This country of ours, this nation of ours, is the grand- 
est, sublimest trust that was ever committed into human 
hands. Pray the Father of lights, we be fiiithful. My 
way of duty, in one regard, has been plain : having 
sworn to support the Constitution of the United States, 
I have striven to keep the oath. The way of obvious 
duty was, in my judgment, the way, the only way, of 
wisdom and safety for the country. 

It was the prayer of New England's greatest states- 
man, that, when his eyes were turned for the last time 
to behold the sun of heaven, he might not see him shin- 
ing on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once 
glorious T nion. IlaM; we ever repeated to ourselves 
these words, *■'' once glorious," '■'once glorious Union"? 



FOR THE SERVICE OF THE GOVERNMENT. 163 

Then with tears let us wash out, or with fire bum out, 
the word, and write "/or ever glorious," born out of 
tribulation into a nobler life. When our eyes shall 
turn to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may 
we see his rays kindling every star and every stripe of 
that banner, which, like the robe of our divine Master, 
was woven without seam ! 

If we save this Union, generation after generation 
will rise up to bless us. If we lose it through divisions, 
through party strifes, through supineness, in seeking 
other ends, our memories will rot evermore. 



164 



THE LOUISIANA ELECTION CASES. 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, FEB. 16, 1863. 

Mr. Speaker, — Whatever other differences of opmion 
there may be between members of this Honsc, we all 
recognize the great importance of the principles and 
policy mvolved in the resolutions before us. There are 
certain facts that are not contested. It is not contested 
in the report of the Committee, or in the arguments of 
the members of the Committee of Elections who did not 
sign the report, that the persons who are elected to this 
House are loyal men. It is not contested, that they 
were elected by loyal citizens of Louisiana. It is not 
contested, that they were elected without military dicta- 
tion or control. 'I'here is nothmg developed in tlie re])ort 
or ill the arguments presented to t]u> House to show tliat 
there was any military dictation or control or inthieiice in 
the election. 

What are the relations which tlies(> chM'tors, and the 
persons who claim these seats, hold, at this nionieiit. to 
the Govei-nnieiit of the I'nited States? Tliev ari> citi- 
zens of the United States, snhject to ;dl the duties iniposcHl 
by the ( 'onstitution and laws of the I'liited States. 'I'liey 
are suhject to taxation. Since the ordinance of secession 
was ])assed, tliey ha\e been taxed, in conformity to the 
provision of the Constitution (art. 1, sect. 'Jj which a])por- 



THE LOUjISIANA ELECTION CASES. 165 

tions direct taxation. They are subject to your revenue- 
laws. Your collector is there to-day collecting duties 
imposed by the Government. Tliey are subject to your 
excise-duties. Your law passed at the last session applies 
to and includes them. They are subject to military ser- 
vice. Some four thousand of loyal residents of New 
Orleans are ah'eady engaged in the military service of 
the Government. 

Now, Mr. Speaker, before the act of secession, these 
men had all the political rights that are correlative to 
these political duties. They had the right of representa- 
tion, which, from the earliest history of this Government, 
has been indissolubly connected with the right of taxa- 
tion. Subject, in war or peace, to all the duties and 
bui'dens of the Government, they are entitled to the 
corresponding rights and privileges that Government had 
conferred upon them, unless in some legal way deprived 
of them. These propositions are too plain for argument. 

I proceed, then, Mr. Speaker, to consider whether 
these rights have been in any way modified or impahed 
by the act of secession. Were they impaked by the 
ordinance passed by the convention of Louisiana ? It is 
conceded on all hands, that that act was null and void, 
and that it did not change the relations which the State 
of Louisiana sustained to this Union. Is that act of 
secession, in itself null and void, rendered operative and 
effective by the use of physical power or armed force ] 
Or, to state the proposition in another form, is the 
ordinance of secession rendered effective because armed 
treason is behind it ? Very clearly, no. An act, void in 
itself under the supreme law of the land, cannot be 



166 THE LOUISIANA ELECTION CASES. 

made to affect or impair the legal rights of any, the 
humblest citizen, because armed treason seeks to en- 
force it. 

]Mr. Speaker, this doctrine is, I know, contested ; but 
I venture to say, that there is no form in which the pro- 
position, that the seceded States have committed either 
suicide or treason, can be put, in which its absurdity is 
not transparent. That I may do no injustice to the advo- 
cates of this doctrine, I will read the statement of it made 
by my distmguished colleague [Mr. Ehot] ; and I beg 
the House to mark the force and effect of his words. He 
is speaking of the ordinance of secession ; and he says, 

" But bciug of no effect by law, yet operative and vitalized by false 
form of law, and by effective and controlling force in fact, it followed 
inevitably, that, while the rebel State had renounced its allegiance 
and cast off the protection of the Government, its territory remained 
within the Union ; and its loyal men thereupon residing were entitled 
to protection in their persons and in their property, and in all their 
rights, as soon as the military power of the Government could be 
exerted there, and a new civil government within the State could 
be created." 

That is to say, the proposition of my colleague is, that, 
although the act of secession is void by law, " it is vital- 
ized by a fidse form of law,"' and by the force behind 
that false form of law. I may be very obtuse ; but I 
])r('f('r the plainer and siiii])li"r ])roposition, that an act 
wliicli is iittcrlv Noid hv tlic supreme law of the laud 
cannot be vitalized or made effective by armed treason, 
but is void still. And 1 beg leave, with all due deference 
to my distinguished colleague, to say, that, if that is the 
j)roposition which he told tis the other day a majority of 
tlie sensible men of Massachusetts believe hi, they have 



THE LOUISIANA ELECTION CASES. 167 

done great injustice to the foolish men of INIassachusetts 
[laughter] ; for they have robbed them of their appro- 
priate food, and of the most absiu'd proposition they 
could find to believe in [laughter]. 

Mr. Eliot. Will my colleague )ield to me ? 

Mr. Thomas. With pleasure. 

Mr. Eliot. Mr. Speaker, I was somewhat surprised 
the other day to observe how very sensitive my distin- 
guished colleague was at the use which I then made of 
the word " sensible." But, when a gentleman states that 
a majority of sensible men are of a certain opinion, it 
does not by any means follow, that those who hold the 
adverse opinion may not also be sensible. My learned 
colleague must not suppose that I mtended at all to place 
him in the category of those who were not sensible, 
certainly not; but only among the minority of sensible 
men [laughter]. My learned colleague is as sensible 
as any of those who differ from him. I should be the 
last man to take from him any claim which he, certainly 
with some sensitiveness, seems to assert, that he belongs 
to a sensible party. In Massachusetts, I am glad to 
beheve, it is a party in the minority, although there are 
in it very sensible gentlemen. 

IVIr. Thomas. I camiot yield the floor to a speech. 
If my colleague desires to ask a question or to make an 
explanation, I have no objection. 

Mr. Eliot. I am endeavoring to make an explana- 
tion ; and I began on that point because my colleague 
has been so very sensitive. Two or three times he 
referred to it as though I intended to intimate that he 
and the People's part}^ in Massachusetts were not sensi- 



168 THE LOUISIANA ELECTION CASES. 

ble. Far be it from mc to say that they are not sensible 
men. In that particular, however, I think they are 
decidedly in the minority ; and, so far as the questions 
are concerned that divided the People's party from the 
great body of men in Massachusetts last faU, I cannot, 
from my stand-point, believe that they were as sensible 
as I hope my learned friend will be when he comes next 
to the polls. 

Mr. Thomas. I cannot peld the floor to my colleague 
to make a pohtical speech. 

Mr. Eliot. My colleague must keep good-natiu'cd. 

Mr. Thomas. It is not siu-ely a question of good 
nature. ]\Iine is not easily exhausted ; but I dcsh'e to 
proceed with my remarks. T do not dcsuc to hear a 
talk about the People's party or any other party. Graver 
matters are before us. 

Mr. Eliot. Does my friend dcclme to yield the 
floor'? 

Mr. Thomas. For a political speech, I must. If my 
colleague has any explanation he desires to make, I will 
yield for explanation ; but I cannot yield for a speech. 

My. Eliot. 1 desire to make an t>\])lanation. Mr. 
Speaker, I do not know whether tliat ])lnase, " State 
suicide," originated in this House or in the other branch 
of Congress. It is not a ])hr;ist' that to my mind conveys 
;i clciir ;iii(l dislinct state of facts. I \\a\v uv\cr used it. 
M \' Icai'iicd (■(tll{';ii,Mi(' li;is ;ittril)u(cd it to u\c. 1 rc^peat, 
1 liavc ncNci- u^cd it. I \\;[\c entertained the idea, and 
now entertain a distinct idea, of wliat I have called 
State treason. 1 had the hoiioi' to speak uj)oii tliat 
subject last sumnu^r ; and it \\ as in the course of that 



THE LOUISIANA ELECTION CASES. 169 

speech that I stated, more at large than I can now 
do, Avhat seem to me to be the true doctrmes on that 
subject. 

Mr. Thomas. I cannot yield the floor and my time 
for this discussion. 

Mr. Eliot. It takes some little time to explain my 
point. 

Ml. Thomas. I do not desire to give up my time for 
discussion upon this question, and I must decline further 
to yield the floor. 

Mr. Eliot. Very well : then I will just say 

The Speaker jjro tempore. The gentleman from 
Massachusetts is not in order. His colleague declines 
to yield the floor. 

Mr. Eliot. My colleague yields to me, as I under- 
stand, to finish this statement. 

The Speaker pro tempore. Does the gentleman from 
Massachusetts yield the floor ? 

Mr. Thomas. For my colleague to flnish what he 
was saying at the moment. 

Mr. Eliot. When a State has done what, under the 
language of the Constitution, amounts to treason ; when 
it has given aid and comfort to the enemy ; when it has 
levied war against the Government ; when its Governor 
has abdicated, its Legislature gone over to the enemy ; 
when it has, by aU the forms of law, arrayed itself 
against the Government ; I say, that State has committed 
treason, and that, as such, it has forfeited aU its rights as 
a State, leaving the loyal men of the State to be cared 
for and protected by the Government. But I repeat, 
that, as a corporation, it has committed treason, and has 

22 



170 THE LOUISIANA ELECTION CASES. 

forfeited all its rights under the Government as a traitor 
State. 

ISIr. Thomas. Is this all my colleague has to say? 

Mr. Eliot. Just to finish the sentence. And may 
be declared by the Government as having forfeited all 
its rights and privileges as a State. 

Mr. Thomas. The doctrine, then, is, that a State 
cannot hang itself, but may put itself in a state of prepa- 
ration to be hanged. 

Mr. Eliot. It deserves to be hanged. 

Mr. Thomas. It can, of course, be arraigned for 
treason ; it can be mdicted for treason, brought to trial 
before a jiu-y of its peers for treason, and hung for trea- 
son [laughter]. The statement well illustrates what 
I have before stated, that there is no form of words mto 
which you can put this doctrine that its absiu'dity will 
not be transparent. The proposition commits suicide, 
not the State. It is felo de se. A State cannot commit 
treason ; nor can the void act of a State change the rela- 
tion which loyal citizens sustain to the Ignited States ; 
nor are the relations which loyal and obedient citizens 
sustain to the Government of the United States broken 
or severed because the ordinances of secession are 
backed up by traitors in ai*ms. These citizens of Louisi- 
ana, therefore, hold the same legal relation to the United 
States that tlu-y did before tlie acts of secession and 
treason, by men wearing the garb of State authority, 
were committed. 

The State of Louisiana (>\ists ; its functions may be 
ill alx'Naiice. All the powers of the State exist ; and all 
that is necessary is sinipl\ that tlie iiiacliinery of the 



THE LOUISIANA ELECTION CASES. 171 

State shall be put in motion. The State itself is like 
]\Iil ton's angels, which, 

" Vital in every part, 
Cannot but by annihilating die." 

This, then, Mr. Speaker, is the state of things before 
us : The loyal men of these two districts of Louisiana, 
holding unbroken their legal relations to the Govern- 
ment of the United States, have elected representatives 
to this Congress of the United States ; and the question 
is, Shall they be admitted ? If not, why not"? An objec- 
tion has been made, though not much pressed, that there 
were no vacancies to fill. Vacancies existed by reason 
of the failure to elect at the general election, and those 
vacancies have never been filled. There is no one occu- 
pying a seat in this House from either of these two 
districts, because there have been no persons entitled by 
law to fill either of them. A case arose m which vacan- 
cies should be filled m pursuance of writs issued by 
executive authority of the State of Louisiana. Were 
they so issued? 

I do not mean to say that this question is free from 
difficulty : it certainly is not. But it has been, I think, 
quite too summarily disposed of by gentlemen, opposed 
to the resolutions of the Committee. It seems to me, 
Mr. Speaker, that much, very much, of the difficulty we 
have in the discussion of this and similar questions, 
results from the attempt to apply to the condition of 
things in which we are placed, principles and rules from 
writers upon mternational law that really throw no hght 
upon, and have no just application to, that condition, ia. 
many respects sui generis ; and for oiu' guide in which, 



172 THE LOUISIANA ELECTION CASES. 

history and public law furnish no precedents or even 
strong analogies. No just or reasonable conclusion can 
be drawn from the powers of a military governor, in a 
territory conquered from a foreign enemy, as to the 
nature and extent of the powers to be exercised in 
States, or parts of States, rescued from the possession of 
rebels in arms against us. This is a military occupation 
of our own territory ; an occupation wliich has become 
necessary by reason of the fact, that the Constitution and 
laws of the United States cannot otherwise be enforced ; 
and that it is our duty to enforce them, and the right of 
the loyal citizens of Louisiana to have them enforced, 
not merely for our benefit, but for their protection. 

Now, ]\ii'. Speaker, what is the object of this vast 
movement of ours ? For what are we carrymg on this 
war? For the purpose of enforcing the laws of the 
United States. Yoiu' war has no other just or legiti- 
mate object but the enforcement of your laws. If these 
laws are obstructed by armed force in the State of 
Louisiana, you have the rigbt to take and to mamtain 
military occupation of that State to remove such obstruc- 
tion. You have the right to sec that the laws of the 
United States arc executed m the State of Louisiana. 

Do gentlemen say, that, because of the existence of 
armed rebellion in the State of Louisiana, we have no 
right to enforce the laws of the Inilcd Slates tliere? 
Have not we the li^ht to collect taxes ? Have we not 
the right to enforce the revenue-laws, and the right to 
conscrijit sohhers from the citizens of that State I Have 
you not the right, by military ])ower, to i)rotect the 
courts of the United States in liu' disti'ict of Louisiana 



THE LOUISIANA ELECTION CASES. 173 

in the exercise of their jurisdiction? I take this po- 
sition, and I fail to see how it can be controverted, 
that if you are in the military occupation of this, your 
own territory, you hold it for the purpose for which the 
war is waged ; for the purpose of upholding the jurisdic- 
tion, and enforcing obedience to the laws, of the United 
States. 

The analogies sought to be drawn from Vattel, or 
other writers on public law, as to the military occupation 
of a conquered territory from a foreign State, have very 
imperfect application to the case before us. The Consti- 
tution and the laws of the United States are the supreme 
law of Louisiana, and you are to enforce the execution 
of those laws ; and I see no valid distinction between 
enforcing those laws which impose duties and burdens 
upon the people, and the enforcement of those laws 
which guarantee and protect the rights of the loyal people 
of the State ; rights springing from us, and to be pro- 
tected by us. 

Mr. Conway. Was the law under which these men 
were elected a law of the United States ? 

Mr. Thomas. The law from which the right to elect 
was derived, and to be elected, was a law of the United 
States, and the supreme law of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, 
I wish to make matters clear as I go. I want gentlemen, 
who believe that we shou.ld enforce the laws of the 
United States for the collection of taxes and the collec- 
tion of the revenue in Louisiana, to point out the dis- 
tinction between enforcing the laws of the United States 
which impose these burdens and duties upon the people, 
and the enforcing of the laws which secure to them the 



174 THE LOUISIANA ELECTION CASES. 

enjoyment of tlieir rights and pmileges under the Con- 
stitution, and especially this great and invaluable right 
of representation, of helping to make the laws which 
they are bound to obey. Our duty to protect is as clear 
as their duty to obey. They are reciprocal and inter- 
dependent. 

We may meet this question of the issue of writs of 
election in another manner. The question, whether 
these writs were properly issued or not, is a technical 
question, and we can meet it by a technical answer. 
We may meet the objection, that the writs were not 
issued by the executive authority of the State, by saying 
that they were issued by the only executive authority of 
that State which the Government of the United States 
or tlic people in these districts in any way recognize, 
and which, in matters of highest concern, they have 
recognized and obeyed. The writs of election were, in 
fact, issued upon the earnest request of the loyal citizens 
of these districts, and were responded to and confirmed 
by them. 

r>iit I do not consider tlio strict legality of tliese writs 
vital to tli(> issue before us. 1 go one step further. I 
contend, wlu^ther these writs were issued by the execu- 
tive authority of the State or not, this may be a valid 
election. I contend, that this provision of the Constitu- 
tion, as otlier provisions of statute in relation to this 
subject, is nilliin tlio ucll-scttlcd distinction b(>tween 
|)i-o\isions \\liich ai-c (li^(•(■tol■^ and t]ios(> \\lii(li arc 
essential. 1 say. nndci- the law of elections, i)ractiscd 
H])f)n from the Ix'ginning of the ( iov(>rnmeiit to this 
hoiu', }ou lia\e gone behind the mere form to get at the 



THE LOUISIANA ELECTION CASES. 175 

substance and truth of the thing ; and that these safe- 
guards, provided by the laws to secure to the citizens 
the orderly exercise of the right of election, were never 
mtended to be used as barriers to exclude them from 
theh enjoyment. Let me call the attention of the House 
to elections whose validity this Hovise has recognized, 
and which proceed upon this distinction. 

Mr. Porter. If I understand the gentleman from 
Massachusetts, he asserts, that, there being no Governor 
of Louisiana elected in pursuance of the provisions of 
her constitution and laws, the military commandant 
appointed by the President, who has assumed the title 
of Military Governor, is to be regarded as the Governor 
or executive authority of the State within the meaning 
of that clause of the Federal Constitution which pro- 
vides, that, in case of vacancies in the representation of 
a State, the "executive authority thereof" shall issue 
writs of election. 

Mr. Thomas. I do not state the proposition so 
broadly as that. What I have said is, that we are in 
the military occupation of our own territory, a portion 
of it where the laws of the United States have been 
impeded by armed force ; that we are there to enforce 
the laws of the United States ; and that it is difficult to 
draw a sound distinction between the powers effective 
for the enforcement of the laws imposing bui-dens and 
duties upon the subject, and those which may be used 
for his protection. The gentleman is mistaken in his 
facts. Mr. Shepley did not assume the title of Mihtary 
Governor. He was appointed Military Governor by the 
President. 



176 THE LOUISIANA ELECTION CASES. 

Mr. Porter. It seems to me that the gentleman is 
at fault in saying there is any law of the United States, 
so far as relates to the election of representatives in 
Congress, to be enforced. The Constitution says, 

"The times, places, and manner of holding elections for senators 
and representatives shall be prescribed in each State by the Legisla- 
ture thereof; but the Congress may at any time, by law, make or 
alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing senators." 

When Congress shall have passed a hiw prcscribmg 
the time, place, and manner of electing representatives, 
then the military power may be invoked to remove 
obstructions in the way of carrying it into practical 
effect. 

Mr. Thomas. The provision of the Constitution cited 
by my friend from Indiana is the one referring to the 
general elections of representatives, and not to the 
elections to fill vacancies. It is by no means dear that 
any legislation of Congress could remove the difficulty. 
In case of vacancies in the delegation of any State, the 
Constitution says " the cxecuti\ e authority thereof sliall 
issue writs of election to fill such vacancies." The 
legislation of Conujress cannot supersede or modify this 
provision ; and after legislation, as before, the same 
(jHcstions would arise as now. Is there an executive 
iiutlioritx of the State, within the iniNinini;- of this ])rt)\i- 
sion '. Is it snilicicnt tliat the writ is issued h\ one 
chiiniinii; to exercise the executive authority. \\\\\i the 
recognition ol" this (iovernment and with tlic assent of 
the ])co])lc ? ( )r is it our dutv to i;o hcliind ids certiti- 
( ate and ;iction. iuid iii<|uir('. in a cas(> ^^luM•e there is no 
conilicting chdni or contest, as to tiie reu,ul;irit) of his 



THE LOUISIANA ELECTION CASES. 177 

appointment? And lastly, supposing that we were 
satisfied the authority was not regular; yet if a day 
was fixed, was known to all the voters, and the case 
shows they complied with the notice, and exercised the 
right of election fully and freely, must we or ought we 
to declare the election void because the authority issuing 
the writ was not regular ? 

Mr. Porter. The learned gentleman will see to 
what a dangerous conclusion his argument must neces- 
sarily lead him. The Constitution provides, that, " when 
vacancies happen in the representation from any State, 
the executive authority thereof shall issue writs of elec- 
tion to fill such vacancies." There is also, however, 
another provision as to senators, that, " if vacancies 
happen by resignation or otherwise during the recess 
of the Legislature of any State, the executive thereof 
may make temporary appointments until the next 
meeting of the Legislature, which shall then fill such 
vacancy." The same words, " executive thereof," are 
employed in both cases ; so that, from the argument 
of the gentleman, it must necessarily foUow, that the 
military governor appointed by the President may fill 
vacancies in the Senate of the United States. Surely 
no one would be wiUing to allow such an exercise of 
power. 

Mr. Thomas. I do not think such a conclusion 
necessarily or legitimately follows. There is a broad 
distinction between the exercise of an official and judicial 
judgment in selecting a senator, and the exercise of a 
power in appointing a day for the people to select their 
own representatives. It has not been the uniform prac- 

23 



178 THE LOUISIANA ELECTION CASES. 

tice of the House to hold that these writs shall be issued 
by the executive authority of the State. I call attention 
to the fact, that gentlemen have been allowed to take, 
and now hold, seats upon this floor, under the acts of the 
Provisional Convention and Governor of Vkginia. I call 
attention also to the fact, that uniformly elections have 
been held in the Territories before theh admission as 
States into the Union, and where, therefore, the elections 
were held without the action of State authorities. 

]Mr. Porter. I would suggest to the gentleman from 
Massachusetts, that that power has been exerted solely 
under the thhd section of the foui'th article of the Consti- 
tution, providing that "new States may be admitted by 
the Congress mto this Union." That clause has been 
interpreted to include the right to have all the officers 
at the time of admission necessary to represent the State 
in the Federal Congress. 

Mr. Thomas. Be it so ; but that provision docs not 
abrogate the other provision of the Constitution, which 
provides that the times and places for elections shall be 
fixed by the Legislature of the State. The practice 
bends the form to the substance. The House, by a 
large majority, during the present term, determined that 
an election held at a time not fixed by the Legislature 
of the State, but in the constitution of the State, was a 
vahd election, though clearly a departure from the letter 
of the law. 

The point to which I was endeavoring to lead the 
House is the distinction between those provisions formal 
and directory and those that I deem essential ; and that 
the House, in the exercise of its power to judge of the 



THE LOUISIANA ELECTION CASES. 179 



elections and the returns of its members, has always felt 
itself enabled to go behmd the " letter which killeth to 
the sphit which maketh ahve," and to ascertain whether, 
in point of fact, there has been a fair election by the 
people of the district, having full opportunity to vote, 
and without violence or fraud. And, therefore, if gentle- 
men differ as to the authority of a military governor, 
or, as I would call him, the provisional governor, of a 
State, they may still be satisfied that there was a full and 
fair notice to the people of the election ; and that the 
loyal people of those districts, having had such full and 
fah notice, did meet and freely exercise their elective 
franchise. 

I beg leave to make this further obvious suggestion to 
the House: that you camiot expect, in districts like 
those in Louisiana, or in any other of the States whose 
citizens have been in arms against us, that regularity, or 
that adherence to the forms of law, which you may justly 
demand in a State where the operation of the laws has 
not been obstructed by force of arms. Irregularities are 
inevitable ; and this House, under its power to determine 
the election of members, will see, not whether all the 
customary provisions of law have been complied with, 
but whether, in pomt of fact, there has been a fair and 
just election. Do sticking-in-the-bark gentlemen tell us 
the registry law was not complied with, and that, there- 
fore, this election is void? It is a fact, that this provi- 
sion for a registry law for New Orleans was embodied in 
the constitution of Louisiana adopted in 1852. It is also 
a fact, that there were two elections of representatives 
from New Orleans, of members admitted to seats in this 



180 THE LOUISIANA ELECTION CASES. 

House, before any registi'V law had been passed. And 
upon what groimd ] Upon the plain ground, that you are 
not to deprive the electors of the exercise of this most 
important right of representation because there is a 
failure to comply with fomial provisions of law. Sup- 
pose, for instance, the law requhed a check-list, and a 
check-hst was not used in the election, and yet, upon 
a full investigation of the facts, the House is satisfied a 
man was elected by a clear majorit}', and without fraud 
or violence : there can be no question, that, mider the 
power vested in the House, it would look dhectly to the 
merits of the election, and confirm it. 

The distinguished gentleman from Indiana pVIr. Voor- 
hees], who first spoke upon this subject, averred that 
there was great danger from the admission of these 
claimants, and, in like cases, that the executive authority 
of this Government would finally prevail over the rights 
and powers of the House. The answer to all such sug- 
gestions is to be found in the fidelity of this House to its 
rights, to its powers, and to its duties ; and, without such 
fidelity, there can be no safety. It is, in all cases, the 
first and final and only judge of the quaHfications, 
elections, and retiu*ns of its members ; and so long as it 
holds that ])ower in its right hand, and exercises it dis- 
creetly, firmly, fearlessly, we need have no fear of the 
Executive. 

The same gentleman suggests, that this was not a free 
election, because the persons who voted at the election 
voted for the pur])ose of avoiding the effects of the ])ro- 
clanuition of the President of the United States ; or, as 
the proclamation of tlie military governor somewhat 



THE LOUISIANA ELECTION CASES. 181 

curiously terms it, to avail themselves of the " benefits " 
secured by the proclamation ; to "\vit, the benefits of hold- 
ing men in bondage. I beg leave to call the attention 
of gentlemen to the fact, that the proclamation of Sept. 
22 nowhere holds out the hope of exemption from its 
operation to any district because it should have a member 
of Congress ; that, on the other hand, the proclamation of 
Sept. 22 is put upon the distinct groimd, that it is not 
a district, but the State, which is to be represented, and 
by an election at which a majority of the voters of a 
State voted. The suggestion in the proclamation of the 
governor was, therefore, without authority, unless derived 
from other source than the proclamation of Sept. 22. 

But, if that proclamation had contained this promise in 
exact terms, I do not see why loyal and faithful people 
might not deske to avoid the practical effects upon them, 
whether legal or illegal, constitutional or in confhct with 
the Constitution, wise or un-wise. That argument proves 
too much. It goes to this extent, that elections are not 
to be mfluenced by the consideration, that those engaged 
in them may thus secure more effectually the protection 
of the Government. One very excellent reason why they 
should exercise the elective franchise, and send members 
to this House, is to effect that object. 

I put this case, then, upon two or three plain grounds. 
I put it upon the ground, that these men, who are asking 
seats in this House, are loyal citizens of the United States ; 
that they have been elected by loyal citizens of the United 
States ; that they have been elected at an election which 
was free ; that they were elected by numbers, which, 
compared with other elections, indicate that the people in 



182 THE LOUISIANA ELECTION CASES. 

the districts were in the movement, and that it was had 
in entire good faith. I put it upon the plain ground, 
that while you demand of the loyal people of Louisiana 
faithful allegiance and obedience to your laws, and to 
bear the burdens of your Government, you should give 
to them the inestimable rights which that Government 
was formed to secure to them ; without which they would 
be subjects, and not citizens ; slaves, and not freemen. 
I put it upon the still higher groimd, that the loyal men 
in the State of Louisiana, who have not engaged m this 
rebellion, or have retiu-ned at the earliest moment to 
their allegiance, have a right to come before you, and ask 
that you shall not permit the mere letter of the law, 
which to-day throws upon them all the weight and bur- 
dens of the Government, to stand in the way of the 
exercise of their dearest and most sacred rights, the 
rights which bind them to vou, and make them of vou. 

ISIr. Speaker, permit me to make one other practical 
suggestion to the House ; and that is, that the only way 
in which you can reconstruct this Government is by the 
co-operation of the loyal men in the seceded States. If 
you mean to go a step further, and try to bring these 
States under absolute subjection, wipe them out of exist- 
ence, and reconstruct them according to your will and 
pleasure and not tlicir rights, you have taken u])on your- 
self a task wliich xou \\a\c not th(^ ])owt'r to excH'uto, 
and which, if you had, would resuh in the overthrow of 
your liberties as well as theirs. No government would 
bo a fit instrument for such a work but a iniHtary despot- 
ism. 1 listorv gives us no hope in sueli a war. But if, 
on the otiier hand, you exixut, as it seems to me every 



THE LOUISIANA ELECTION CASES. 183 

rational man must expect, to reconstruct the Govern- 
ment with the s)Tnpathy, co-operation, and aid of the 
loyal men of these States, then I ask you, in the name of 
prudence and of justice, not to shut the doors of this 
House against them. Do not, I beseech you, teach them 
the terrible lesson, that your powers are effective to 
destroy, but not to redeem ; to crush, but not to save. 
Meet them at the threshold ; welcome and bless them as 
they seek once more the shelter of the old homestead. 



184 



CONSCRIPTION BILL. 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, FEB. 25, 1863. 

The House resumed, as the regular order of business, the conside- 
ration of the bill of the Senate (No. 511) for enrolling and calling out 
the national forces, and for other purposes. 

Mr. Thomas obtained the floor. 

The Speaker. The gentleman from New York hav- 
ing already spoken, and not being the mover or intro- 
ducer of the proposition, cannot speak again without the 
leave of the House. The gentleman from Massachu- 
setts [Mr. Thomas] is entitled to the floor. 

Mr. Baker. Will the gentleman from Massachusetts 
yield to me for a moment ■? 

Mr. Thomas, No, sir : I cannot yield for any pur- 
pose. I have but twenty minutes. 

Mr. IIoLMAN. I rise to a point of order. I sought 
the floor at the time the gentleman from New York 
[Mr. Olin] did, and raised upon him the point of order 
which has been disposed of by the Chair ; and I think, 
therefore, I am entitled to the floor. 

The Speaker. The C'hair did not understand the 
gentleman from Indiana as claiming the floor, but only 
as raising the question of order. If the gentleman 
raised it desiring to sjjcak himself, he is entitled to the 
floor. 



CONSCRIPTION BILL. 185 

Mr. HoLMAN. I understand that the gentleman from 
Kentucky [Mr. Crittenden] and the gentleman from 
Massachusetts [Mr. Thomas] desh'e to be heard on this 
bill, and I am unwilling to occupy the time of the House 
while those gentlemen desire to speak. I will, there- 
fore, yield to those gentlemen ; and I now resign the 
floor to the gentleman from Massachusetts. 

Mr. Thomas. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from 
Indiana [Mr. Holman] for his great courtesy in yield- 
ing to me the floor. I rejoice, with exceeding joy, that 
I have no party interests to represent, no party topics 
to discuss. I have heard with sorrow, not to say dis- 
gust, the voices of discord and bitter strife from both 
sides of the House. If the spirit of party cannot be 
subdued or chastened in the presence of our imminent 
peril, God save the country ; for he only can. 

In the few remarks I shall have time to submit to the 
House, I would look directly to the merits of the mea- 
sure before us. Mr. Speaker, this is a terrible bill ; 
terrible in the powers it confers upon the Executive, 
terrible in the duty and burden it imposes upon the citi- 
zen. I meet the suggestion by one as obvious and as 
cogent; and that is, that the exigency is a terrible one, 
and calls for the use of all the powers with which the 
Government is invested. 

Some of the features of the bill my judgment con- 
demns, unhesitatingly condemns. 

The period for which the service is required is unrea- 
sonably long. I think the enrolment should not include 
judges of the State courts, or ministers of the gospel, 
or members of Congress of either branch ; though the 

24 



18G CONSCRIPTION BILL. 

inclusion of members of Congress would be, T tliink, 
simply void. I earnestly object also to the provision of 
the bill for the arrest of civilians by the military power ; 
but I understand that gentlemen upon my right will 
consent to an amendment which shall strike out that 
feature. But, saving these objections, I think the 
bill is within the scope of the Constitution, and neces- 
sary and just. 

First, the question of i^wer. Congress has power to 
" declare war." A necessary incident to this power 
would be that of raising and supporting armies. But 
the power to " raise and support armies " is given in 
terms. No limitation is imposed as to the numbers to 
be raised, or the mode of raising. In the nature of 
things, such limitation could not be imposed. The 
power must be broad enough to meet all possible exi- 
gencies ; and the possible exigencies of the country no 
man or prophet could foresee. The powers of Con- 
gress within their scope are supreme, and strike directly 
to the subject, and hold him in their firm and iron 
grasp. I stand by the opinion, early expressed \\\nn\ 
tliis floor, tliat there is not a human being, domiciled 
within the territory of the I'nited States, black or white, 
bond or free, whom the' Government may not use for its 
mihtary service, whenever the defence of the country 
requires ; and of this exigency Congress alone must 
jii(li;-e. 

Is the exercise of \\\v jjowcr to raise armies made 
dependent upon the consent of tlie iii(li\i(lual cili/cn ? 
I say, clcai'ly not. •* ( iov(M'innciit is not hilJitincv," said 
AN'ashingtoii ; it is not mural suasion. That only is gov- 



CONSCRIPTION BILL. 187 

ernment which can command obedience and enforce it. 
The duty of the citizen to defend the State is admitted. 
Does the discharge of that duty depend upon his will 
and discretion, or the will and discretion of the Gov- 
ernment ? If upon the former, the objection is fatal 
even to any mihtia law : if upon the latter, the extent, 
and mode of use, are questions for Congress only. 

The question was asked half a century ago, whether, 
under the power to support armies. Government could 
take property without consent ; and, if not, how it was, 
that, under the power to raise armies, you can take 
men without consent. I answer, that very clearly, for 
the support of the war, you may take the property of 
the subject without his consent, but not without com- 
pensation ; for the fifth article of the Amendments has 
put this limitation upon your power. 

Under the " Articles of Confederation," Congress had 
not power to raise armies, though it had to build and 
equip a navy. Its duty was to agree upon the number 
of land forces, and to make requisitions upon each State 
for its quota (Art. 9). But the men who framed the 
Constitution, knew, by the experience of the Kevolu- 
tion, how defective and inadequate was such power, and 
that, whatever possible danger there might be in the 
grant of the power without limitation, any limitation 
might prove fatal to the national defence. The power 
was therefore given to raise armies without qualification ; 
and, though the subject of much bitter complaint and 
criticism in the State Conventions, to-day at least its 
necessity is plain to all men. 

Having the power to raise and support armies, and 



188 CONSCRIPTION BILL. 

the exigency existing in which the use of that power is 
necessary, the question arises, whether the powers given 
to Congress and the States, with respect to the militia, 
qualify and restrain the power to raise and support 
armies. Very clearly not, Mr. Speaker. They are dis- 
tinct, independent powers. The militia is a branch of 
service well understood in the mother-countiy and our 
own, to be called forth " to execute the laws, suppress 
insurrections, and repel invasions." It was not designed 
for permanent service, but to meet special exigencies, 
and for brief periods of time. 

Much has been said, though without much reflection, 
about the very " unpatriotic " course of the Government 
of Massachusetts with respect to the use of the militia 
in the war of 1812. The opinion of the Supreme 
Court of Massachusetts of that day proceeded, as I recol- 
lect it, upon the ground, that, the purposes of the militia 
being to suppress insurrection and repel invasion, the 
militia of the State could not be required by the Federal 
Executive to go beyond the limits of the State. To that 
view I do not assent ; but it is, I think, quite plain, they 
are not, in the light of the Constitution, a ]iart of the 
army of the United States : they are to be enrolled and 
organized for tlie purposes stated in the Constitution, 
and for no other. 

'J'liis uii({u;ililicMl ])()wor to raise and snp])ort armies is 
given us to mrrt an lioiir and an exigency like this. 

'I'h(> gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. Wickliff'e] says 
that the army is made up, and has been made up, by 
volunteer enhstments, and tliat you never have " con- 
scripted " men into the army. Doubtless, such has 



CONSCRIPTION BILL. 189 

heretofore been the practice ; but the exigency never 
before arose when it was necessary to conscript men 
into an army. The exigency does not confer new 
powers, but evokes them into service. At this moment, 
the question, whether we shall use this power, is not one 
of expediency merely ; not what is best. It is, in effect, 
a question, to this nation, of life or death. We literally 
have no choice. 

Gentlemen upon my right (the Republican side of 
the House) know that it is my conviction, that all the 
vaunted panaceas for our troubles have failed, utterly 
failed. I expected them to fail. I attempted in vain 
to satisfy the House, that it was leaning upon reeds 
shaken by the wind. My earnest, repeated suggestions 
were, of course, unheeded ; but the results are too 
palpable to be overlooked or mistaken, and reason is 
slowly re-ascending the steps of its throne. Pray God 
it may not be too late. 

The policy inaugurated on the 1st of December, 1861, 
has been fruitless of good : it has changed the ostensi- 
ble, if not real, issue of the war. That policy, and the 
want of persistent vigor in our military counsels, render 
any further reliance upon voluntary enlistments futile. 
The nostrums have all failed. Confiscation, emancipa- 
tion by Congress, emancipation by the proclamation of 
the President, compensated emancipation, arbitrary ar- 
rests, paper made legal tender, negro armies, will not 
do the mighty work. Nothing will save us now but vic- 
rories in the field and on the sea ; and then the proffer 
of the olive branch, with the most liberal terms of 
reconciliation and re-union. We can get armies in no 



190 CONSCRIPTION BILL. 

other way but by measures substantially those in the bill 
before us, unless the Administration will retrace its 
steps, and return to the way of the Constitution, for us 
the strait and narrow way which leads unto life. The 
war on paper is at an end. The people have, for a 
time, been deluded by it. That delusion exists no 
longer. If you are to suppress this Rebellion, all instru- 
mentalities will fail you but the power of your own 
right arm. 

Mr. Speaker, the measures and policy heretofore pur- 
sued have not been merely fruitless of good ; they have 
been fruitful of evil : they have made, or largely contri- 
buted to make, a united South ; they have made a 
divided North ; they have alienated from the Adminis- 
tration the confidence and affection of large portions of 
the people ; they have paralyzed your arm, and divided 
your counsels. Gentlemen flatter themselves this alien- 
ation and disaffection are the work of the Democrats ; 
that the people have been misled and deceived by their 
wiles. Sir, tlie people of this country read, and keep 
their eyes open, and comprehend ; and the plain fact is, 
you cannot unite them upon the policy you now pursue. 
Tliey do not believe in destroying the Union and Con- 
stitution in the \\o]w of building up better by force of 
arms. You may \nu\o thcni on tlie issue of maintaining 
the Union and tlic ( j'on eminent at every })iiee and cost, 
l)nt upon no other. 

J laving distracted the ])nltlic miml. having alienated to 
a great degree the affection and contidence of the coun- 
try, what is left to you ? To resort to those constitutional 
l)owers Nested in }on for the preservation of tlie Ciov- 



CONSCRIPTION BILL. 191 

ernment which you have in* trust, and which you must 
use, or be false to that trust. Gentlemen say the peo- 
ple will not bear this measure. I will not believe it. I 
believe the people of this country are ready to do and 
to endure every thing for the preservation of their unity, 
their national life, and, through that unity and that 
national life, all that makes life precious to men : they 
will submit to it. In view of the infinite interests at 
stake in this great controversy ; in the solemn conviction 
that there is to-day no hope of peace except in disinte- 
gration ; that, as a nation, we must conquer in arms, or 
perish ; they will meet and respond to this imperative 
call of duty. Such is my hope and trust. 

But, Mr. Speaker, suppose they hesitate ; suppose 
they do not submit: you can but try; you have no 
other hope. The negro will not save you ; paper 
money will not save you ; your infractions of ]3ersonal 
liberty will not save you. If the illegal and unnecessary 
arrests are persisted in, in the peaceful and loyal States, 
they will ruin you. Go firmly to the people, and pre- 
sent to them the real issue : they will understand the 
terrible exigency in which the country is placed ; and 
they will be true to that country, if you show clearly to 
their comprehension the length and breadth and height 
and depth of that exigency. Mr. Speaker, the issue 
must be met at all hazards. If the people will not 
support you, if they will not do this highest act of duty, 
the days of this Republic are numbered, the end is 
nigh. Satisfy them that you mean to be true to the 
Constitution and the Union, and they will be true to 
you, and will uphold and save you. 



192 CONSCRIPTION BILL. 

The issue, I repeat, must be met. You die without 
this measure: you can no more icith it, except you die, 
as cowards die, many times. I go, therefore, for appeal- 
ing from panaceas and make-shifts to this highest, most 
solemn, and imperative duty of the citizen to protect 
the life of the State. 



193 



NEW ENGLAND AND THE UNION. 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, FEB. 28, 1863. 

Mr. Speaker, — The most careless observer of the 
signs of the times will not have failed to notice 
the attacks, frequent, persistent, ubiquitous, upon the 
history, character, and policy of New England. The 
evidence of union and concert in these attacks is plain ; 
and, what is very significant, the concert includes the 
politicians and presses of the States in arms against us. 
The aim and purpose of these attacks are palpable. 
They are not for counsel, rebuke, chastening : to these 
we might give heed for possible good. The obvious pur- 
pose of this war of words is to create a feeling of bitter 
hostility to New England in the Western and Middle 
States (the traitors in arms against the Union hate her 
now with sufficient intensity) ; to force the conviction 
upon those States, that the character and policy of New 
England are such, that the good-will and harmony of 
the country cannot be maintained while she forms part 
of the Union ; and to bring about a reconstruction on 
the basis of the Confederate Government, slavery for 
its corner-stone, and " New England left out in the 
cold." 

The element of the New-England character and 
policy, which, it is averred, makes union with her intole- 

25 



194 NEW ENGLAND AND THE UNION. 

rable and impracticable, is her Puritanism. In an age 
of discoveries, that discovery is the most remarkable. 
After Puritanism has been upon the continent two cen- 
turies and a half, building up free institutions ; after 
union with it for three generations, its light following 
the light of the sun, and kindling the western horizon 
with new glory ; after having suffered and toiled with it, 
and been inspired by it through the E-evolution ; after 
having enjoyed with it, or in spite of it, for seventy-four 
years, the freest and most beneficent Government the 
Divine Ruler ever permitted to man ; the country learns, 
with surprise, it has all the while been under the sad- 
dest of delusions ; that what it had fondly believed a 
" spirit of health," is, in truth, a " goblin damned ; " that 
New England is a diseased limb of our body politic, 
that must be severed, or the whole body perish. 

With scarcely less surprise, if at a time like this we 
have a right to be surprised at any thing, do we observe 
by whom these assaults upon New England are made. 
By those who claim to be the especial friends of the 
democratic institutions which Puritan hands planted and 
Puritan tears watered in the wilderness of the New 
World. By the especial friends of personal liberty, of 
which, under the Tudors and Stuarts, the Puritans were 
the depositaries ; and of which, from th:it day to this, 
they have been the vigilant and zealous defenders. By 
the especial friends of the Inion, which germinated 
on the New-England soil, and of which the lunnble con- 
federation of tlie Xew-l'ngland Colonies was the fore- 
runner and the proithec y. \\\ the esj)ecial friends of 
the Constitution, which, in the honr of its past perils, 



NEW ENGLAND AND THE UNION. 195 

has found in New-England statesmen some of its firmest 
bulwarks, and, in the greatest of them all, its great de- 
fender. With Virginia, who, by her resolutions of 1798, 
inserted the wedge, which, from that day, she has driven 
deeper and nearer to the heart of the Union ; with 
South Carolina, which, more than thirty years ago, set 
up the standard of revolt, and has been laboring for a 
generation, with persistent malignity and folly, to destroy 
the Government she had felt only in its blessings ; with 
the Gulf States, who are seeking, by a rebellion re- 
morseless and bloody, to plunge themselves and the 
country into the gulf of woe and perdition ; with these. 
Union is possible and desirable, but not with the Puri- 
tans of New England ! 

Leave them to perish on their granite, ice-bound 
peaks ! Theirs is a restless spirit, the very genius of 
discontent. They disturbed the repose of the Tudors ; 
they reformed the Reformation ; they took from one 
Stuart his head, and from another his throne ; they 
secured Magna Carta ; they gave to civil liberty the 
Petition of Right ; they left merry England in the hey- 
day of its material prosperity, where, could they have 
appreciated the tranquillity of despotism, they might 
have laughed and grown fat; they left the homes of 
childhood, the graves of fathers, and faced ocean, wil- 
derness, want, the savage foe, merely to pray as the 
spirit taught them to pray. Slmijle men, they might 
have worshipped God in solemn temples, in cathedral 
aisles, the eye ravished with beauty, and the ear with 
music. They sought rather the rude log-house in the 
forest, or the temple not made with hands ; preferring 



196 



NEW ENGLAND AND THE UNION. 



to royal favor the favor of the King of kings. They 
planted their humble commonwealths upon a sterile soil 
and in an inhospitable climate. Their institutions were 
laid on the rough granite of English liberty. Instead of 
seeking to bask in royal sunshine, they stood out in the 
cold, and contrived to bar their doors, not only against 
intruders, but against the king. Loyal to the crown 
when the crown let them alone, they maintained, from 
the beginning, a substantial, sturdy independence. 
"When separation came, it is among the most striking 
things in history to observe how slight changes in the 
framework of government w-ere necessary. For ninety 
years, Mr. Speaker, their destinies have been blended 
with those of the other colonies. From many States 
sprung up one nation. To-day, New England finds 
upon her soil more than three millions of free, intel- 
ligent, happy people. A million of living men born 
upon that soil have their homes in the other States. 
One-third of the population of the United States is of 
New-England descent ; its ancestral graves and memories 
with us. 

The Puritans have borne witli them toward the setting 
sun the institutions, the manners, the culture of New 
England ; the meeting-house, the town-house, the com- 
mon school, the college, the village library. They were 
not without the weaknesses and follies of tlieir time, 
and folHes tlieir own ; l)ut in s[)ite of these, and over and 
above these, they liad the elements of character wliic h 
fit men to be tlie founders of (Mni)ire, — coiuUtorcs iiiipc- 
r'loniiH, — firmness, courage, projjhetic sagacity, serene, 
unfaltering trust in God. And they were the founders 



NEW ENGLAND AND THE UNION. 197 

of an empire ; a beneficent, a glorious, let us pray the 
infinite Lawgiver, an enduring empire. 

But I forget, Mr. Speaker : wise men have discovered 
not only that the sun has spots, but that it is the spots 
that make up the sun ; and that, after all, there is no 
light or life or healing in his beams ; that the clothes 
are more than the man, the outward more than the 
inward, the accidental and temporary more than the vital 
and permanent. The history of three centuries is to 
be rewritten ; the judgment of the civilized world to be 
reversed ; the House of Stuart to be recanonized ; the 
locks of the Cavalier to be recurled, and the Round- 
head again set upon the stocks for the rabble to pelt. 
The task is formidable ; but as wit has a keen edge, and 
error and calumny are swift of foot, it may be w^ell to 
notice briefly some items of the great debt we owe to the 
Puritans and their descendants, and some of the grounds 
of attack. 

The debt which personal liberty owes to the Puritans 
can scarcely be overstated. By liberty I mean no philo- 
sophical abstractions, no platitudes of French philoso- 
phy, but practical, personal freedom, intrenched in, 
and defined and upheld by, sovereign law ; the sense and 
right of security which makes a man's house his castle, 
and his person sacred ; a man s right to life, property, 
the use of his brain and of his lips, within the pale of 
the law, and unless deprived of them by due process 
of law; the right without which all the forms and 
machinery of free government are mockery, delusion, 
and fraud. It is to the Puritans of the time of Charles 
I. we owe the great Petition of Right, to whose lofty 



198 NEW ENGLAND AND THE UNION. 

yet eminently practical ideas of liberty our times have 
not climbed. 

Let me ask the Clerk to read the passages I have 
marked. Observe, Mr. Speaker, how history repeats 
itself. " I praised the dead who are already dead more 
than the living who are yet alive." 

"Whereas also, by the stalute called the Great Charter of the 
liberties of Englaud, it is declared and enacted, that no freeman may- 
be taken or imprisoned, or be disseized of his freehold or liberties or 
his free customs, or be outlawed or exiled, or in any manner de- 
stroyed, but by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the 
land ; 

" And, in the eight and twentieth year of the reign of King 
Edward III., it was declared and enacted, by authority of Parliament, 
that no man, of what estate or condition that he be, should be put out 
of his land or tenement, nor taken nor imprisoned nor disinherited, 
nor put to death, without being l)rought to answer by due process of 
law ; 

" Nevertheless, against the tenor of the said statutes, and other the 
good laws and statutes of your realm to that end provided, divers of 
your subjects have of late been imprisoned without any cause .showed ; 
and when, for their deliverance, they were brought before justice by 
your majesty's writs of haheas corpus^ there to imdergo and receive as 
the court should order, and their keepers commanded to certify the 
causes of tlnir (htalner, no cause was certified but that they were 
detained bv \i>ur uia'usty's special commaml, signified by the lords of 
your \'\\\\ ( iiuiicil. and yet were retunuMl liack to several prisons, 
witliout being charged with any thing to which they might make 
uii.-wer according to the law ; 

" And whereas also, by the said CJreat Cliarlcr, and utlier of the 
laws and statutes of this your realm, no man ought to be adjuilged to 
death but by thi- laws cstablishetl in this your realm, eitlur by the 
customs of the same realm or by acts of I'ariianienl ; ami whereas 
no offeiKU-r. of wiiat kind soever, is exempted from tlie proceedings to 
l)e used, and pMiiisliments to l)e indicted, l)y the laws ami statutes of 
tliis your lealin : m'\ nlliilc--. nl'lnie lime, divcis c()imni->ions, under 
vour majesty's great seal, liave issued fortli, liy which certain persons 
have been assigned and appointed commissiouers, with power aud 



NEW ENGLAND AND THE UNION. 199 

authority to proceed Avithin the land, according to the justice of mar- 
tial law, against such soldiers or marines, or other dissolute persons 
joining with them, as should commit any murder, robbery, felony, 
mutiny, or other outrage or misdemeanor whatever, and by such sum- 
mary course and order as is agreeable to martial law, and as is used 
in armies in time of war, to proceed to the trial and condemnation of 
such offenders, and them to cause to be executed and put to death 
according to the law-martial : 

" By pretext whereof, some of your majesty's subjects have been, 
by some of the said commissioners, put to death, when and where, if 
hy the laios and statutes of the land they had deserved' death,, hy the same 
laxvs and statutes also they might, and by no other ought to, have been 
judged and execided." 

You will not fail to observe, Mr. Speaker, that there 
is no complaint that the writs of habeas corpus were not 
issued. They were issued, and the subjects brought 
before justice, and the keepers commanded to certify the 
cause of their detainer. The ground of complaint is, 
that no cause was certified, but that the subjects were 
detained hy his majesty's sj^ecial command, and were 
returned to prison without heing charged with any thing 
to which they might make answer according to the law. 
The " privilege of the writ " was suspended. This is all 
that can be done, under the Constitution, by Congress 
or the Executive, or both combined. 

Again : observe the lofty moral ground a Puritan 
Parliament assumes. It concedes that the persons 
against whom the "justice of martial law" has been 
used might be " dissolute, and such as should commit 
murder, robbery, felony, mutiny, and other outrages and 
misdemeanors ; " but it never occurred to the great au- 
thors of this Petition that men charged with crimes " had 
no rights." They knew, as we know, that when men 



200 NEW ENGLAND AND THE UNION. 

were the objects of hatred or suspicion, it was then, and 
chiefly then, they needed the shield and protection of 
standing laws. 

The Puritan Parliament goes on to pray (demand) 
that the commission for proceeding " by martial law" may 
be revoked, and that thereafter no commissions of a like 
nature may issue. To which, in full Parliament, the 
king answered, "Soit droit comme il est desirce." 

I regret my time will not permit us to hear every word 
of this gospel of personal liberty. If the Puritans had 
given us nothing more, our debt of gratitude could never 
be paid. The writ of habeas corpus of Charles II. did 
not enlarge these liberties. It was remedial only. As 
such, it was highly beneficial ; but it conferred no new 
right. " Its office," says Hallam, " was to cut off the 
abuses by which the Government's lust of power, and 
the servile subtilty of crown lawyers, had impaired so 
fundamental a privilege." 

If we cross the ocean with the Pilgrims, we shall find 
them not only affirming, but strengthening, the nunii- 
ments of personal liberty. Proof of this may be found 
in the " Body of Liberties " enacted by the Colony of 
Massachusetts in 1641. (I hope I shall be pardoned 
for taking jNIassachusetts, the mother-colony, as an illus- 
tration.) Let me, Mr. Speaker, have two or three of 
these " liibertics " read, to sliow their geiu'ral tt'nijxu- and 
sj)irit, and liow grossly (he colonists have been misun- 
derstood : — 

" Tlu' five fViiilloii of siicli lilici-tii's. iiniuiinilifs. Mini privilcfrcs ns 
liiinmiiily, cix ililv, and C'Iiii>ti;iiiil y call for as diR', lo rwi v man in liis 
])lucu uud propurliuii, williuut iiiipcuchmcut uud iulringcuieut, liuth 



NEW ENGLAND AND THE UNION. 201 

ever been, and ever will be, the tranquillity and stability of churches 
and commonwealths ; and the denial or deprival thereof, the disturb- 
ance, if not the ruin, of both." 

In God's name, amen ! Heart and head say, amen ! 

"No man's life shall be taken away; no man's honor or good 
name shall be stained ; no man's person shall be arrested, restrained, 
banished, dismembered, nor any loays punished ; no man shall be 
deprived of his wife or children ; no man's goods or estate shall 
be taken away from him, nor any way endangered, under color of law, 
or countenance of authority, unless it be by virtue or equity of some 
express law of the country warranting the same, established by a 
General Court, and sutficiently published ; or, in case of the defect of 
a law in any particular case, by the word of God ; and in capital 
cases, or in cases concerning dismembering or banishment, according 
to that Avord to be judged by the General Court." 

Magna Carta planted on the soil of the New World. 

" Every man, whether inhabitant or foreigner, free or not free, 
shall have liberty to come to any public court, council, or town-meet- 
ing ; and, either by speech or writing, to move any lawful, season- 
able, and material question, or to present any necessary motion, 
complaint, petition, bill, or information, whereof that meeting hath 
proper cognizance, so it be done in convenient time, due order, and 
respective [respectful] manner." 

Was ever the sacred right of petition made so prac- 
tical and effective ? 

" No man's person shall be restrained or imprisoned by any authori- 
ty whatsoever before the law hath sentenced him thereto, if he can 
put in sufficient security, bail, or mainprise for his appearance, and 
good behavior in the mean time, unless it be in crimes capital, and con- 
tempts in open court, and in such cases where some express act of 
court doth allow it. 

" Every man that is to answer for any criminal cause, whether he 
be in prison or under bail, his cause shall be heard and determined at 
the next court that hath proper cognizance thereof, and may be done 
without prejudice of justice. 

" No church censure shall degrade or depose any man from any 
civil dignity, office, or authority he shall have in the Commonwealth. 

26 



202 NEW ENGLAND AND THE UNION. 

" We likcAvise give full power and liberty, to any perpon that shall 
at any time be denied or deprived of any of these liberties, to com- 
mence and prosecute their suit, complaint, or action, against every 
man that shall so do, in any court that hath proper cognizance or 
judicature thereof." 

These humble colonists comprehended that there 
could be no justice which was not remedial ; or where 
the way to redress was blocked at every step. 

Now, I do not contend, Mr. Speaker, that the found- 
ers of New England were always true to their own pro- 
fessions, always realized then' own ideal. Far from it : 
they had not only the infirmities of the race, but the 
superstitions and weaknesses of their time ; when the 
powers of light were in struggle with those of dark- 
ness, and held divided empire. This I claim for them, 
that they apprehended the dawning light, and woac its 
golden threads into the texture of their political fabric. 
Theirs was the toil of the distaff: ours, the robe of 
light. 

" Be to their faults a little blind ; 
Be to their virtues very kind." 

The founders, and four generations of their descend- 
ants, have passed away. Massachusetts, having re- 
nounced her allegiance to the British Crown, and in the 
midst of a terrible struggle 'to make good the declara- 
tion, repairs the framework of her government. 'I'he 
people will have a Ijiond, comprehensive declaration of 
rights ])recede the first grant of ])()wer. Oiu'iiiiii,^ witli 
the averment, that ;ill incn are born free and e([nal ; 
with the recognition ol" llicir dutv to A\()rslii[) God, and 
of the right to worshii) him accorchng to the dictates of 
conscience ; that government is instituted for the people, 



NEW ENGLAND AND THE UNION. 203 

and all its just powers derived from them ; this declara- 
tion proceeds to define and secure the rights of personal 
liberty. The Constitution of Massachusetts makes it 
the duty of her public servants frequently to recur to 
and faithfully to observe these principles. At the risk 
of tasking your patience, I will recur to and read a 
few of the more vital. They are the beacon-lights of 
our history. Let us pray the time may not come when 
they shall serve only as monuments and memorials of a 
better age. 



" Every subject of the Commonwealth ought to find a certain reme- 
dy, hy having recourse to the laws, for all injuries or wrongs luhich he 
may receive in his person, property, or character. 

" No person shall be arrested, imprisoned, or despoiled, or deprived 
of his property, immunities, or privileges, put out of the protection of 
the law, exiled, or deprived of his life, liberty, or estate, but by the 
judgment of his peers or the law of the land. 

" Every person has a right to be secure from all unreasonable 
searches and seizures of his person, his houses, his papers, and all his 
possessions. All wai-rants, therefore, are contrary to this right, if the 
cause or foundation of them he not previously supported by oath or 
affirmation. 

" The liberty of the press is essential to security of freedom in a 
State : it ought not, therefore, to be restrained in this Common- 
wealth. 

" The military poiver shall always be held in exact subordination to 
the civil authority, and be governed by it. 

" The power of suspending the laws, or the execution of the laws, 
ought not to be exercised but hy the Legislature, or by authority derived 
from it ; to be exercised in such particular cases only as the Legisla- 
ture shall expressly provide for. 

" No person can, in any case, he subject to law-martial, or to any 
penalties or pains hy virtue of that law, except those engaged in the 
army or navy, and except the militia in actual service, hut by autho- 
rity of the Legislature." 



204 NEW ENGLAND AND THE UNION. 

!Mr. Speaker, these principles have been instilled into 
me from childhood. I drank them in with my mother s 
milk. They come to me crowned with precions ances- 
tral memories. They are bone of my bone, flesh of my 
flesh, of the very warp and woof of my being. They 
define for me the word " liberty," the bright particular 
jewel of which the forms of free government are but the 
setting. I can understand the change in the setting: I 
cannot understand the crushing of the jewel. These 
principles have been my counsellors here : I have walked 
in their path ; I have been guided by their light. My 
sense of what fidelity to them required has compelled 
me to dissent from some of the measures of the Admin- 
istration ; nay, more, earnestly to oppose them. I have 
regretted the occasion, but have had no question as to 
my duty ; and, without a shadow of fear or distrust, I 
abide, the hour of excitement and passion past, the sober 
judgment of the Commonwealth of my love and pride. 
God bless her, whether she condemn or uphold ! 

To return. When, eight years later, the question as 
to the adoption of the Constitution of the United States 
was presented to the people of ^lassachusctts, they 
objected that no Bill of Ivights was made part of the 
nation's supreme law. They led the way in the adop- 
tion of tlie amendments which make up our national 
!Magna Carta. Articles two, three, six, seven, and ten, 
are from tlie Massachusetts Bill of Ivights. Articles 
one. four, five, and eiglit, arc found in our Bill of 
Ivights, but were substantially taken from the Declara- 
tion of Kiglits of ^'i^ginia in 177(). 

These facts show tlic traditional, settled policy of 



NEW ENGLAND AND THE UNION. 205 

Massachusetts. Her personal -liberty bills had their 
origin in this her lifelong devotion to this policy ; in the 
desu'e of her people to give to the humblest man on her 
soil, to the fugitive from bondage, the presumptions of 
the common law, and habeas corpus, and trial by jury. 
I do not say, her legislation did not overstep the just 
boundary between the powers of the State and National 
Governments : I think it did. But, having had occasion 
to examine carefully that legislation, I do say, that its 
character has been grossly misrepresented. I do aver, 
that in no respect in which that legislation passed a 
hair s-breadth the line of State powers has it been sus- 
tained by the judiciary of the State. I do say, that there 
never has been a day or hour, when the arrest of any 
fugitive from service has been defeated by any statute 
of Massachusetts recognized and enforced by its judi- 
cial tribunals. I do aver, that by no law or judicial 
decree in that Commonwealth have the rights of any 
one master, in any one case, been destroyed or impaired. 
I always opposed that legislation, because I felt it was 
incapable of doing any legal, substantial good, and was 
not, in spirit, loyal to the Union ; because it wounded 
and grieved the friends of the Union. The traitors who 
brooded over and gave life and form to this Eebellion 
knew full well that their rights had never been impaired 
by these laws ; and were driven to the shallow pretence, 
that the void act of a State Legislature, not upheld by 
its courts or executive, had the effect to nullify acts of 
Congress, and prevent their execution. See the ordi- 
nance of secession of South Carolina; false premises 
leading to false conclusions. 



206 Ts'EW ENGLAND AND THE UNION. 

A people willing to risk so much to guard the rights 
of the fugitive from service cannot fail to view with 
deep sensibility the arrests made in the peaceful and 
loyal States, where no plea of necessity now obtains, 
whose usual channels of justice are unobstructed, in 
violation of the muniments of liberty, to illustrate and 
secure which has been their glory and pride. They 
cannot but regard with distrust, if not with indignation, 
the subtile lawyer and the time-serving politician, who 
not only defend, but stimulate and encourage them. 
They cannot but deprecate the recurrence of acts which 
serve only to weaken the love of Union, and to encour- 
age and give comfort to its foes. 

Let us turn now, for a moment, to the debt which The 
Union owes to New England. As I have before sug- 
gested, the germ of the Union is to be found in the con- 
federation of the New-England Colonies in 1043, with 
its Union army of two hundred and thirty-five men. 
In the articles of this confederation may be found the 
great idea and thouglit, cinbo(h(Hl and made effective in 
the Constitution, the reconciliation of central ])ower 
Avitli local independence ; for security against dangers 
witliout, and conflicts within, mutual protection and 
reciprocal dependence ; for domestic institutions and lo- 
cal interests, indcptMidence and entire self-control, 'i'he 
(listi'iliut ion of powci's Ix'tw ('(Ml the cenlral CJt)^ eminent 
and the States, and the States and the nnniicipaUties, is 
th(^ great p()lili(;il tliought which we have organized and 
ilhistrated ; unity witliout centrahzation, unity witli (H- 
versities of ])()licv and operation. The resuh of unity 
with centraH/.ation wonhl be desi)otisni, whatever the 



NEW ENGLAND AND THE UNION. 207 

outward form: the fruit of unity with diversity has 
been the most beautiful iUustration the world has seen 
of the largest liberty blended with the firmest order. 
This humble confederation formed the first American 
Union, and contained the first fugitive-slave law. 

If we come down to the Revolution, the labors and 
sacrifices of the New-England Colonies are matters of 
the most familiar history. Their present is trembling 
in the balance ; theu* future is with God ; their past has 
stood before the judgment-seat, and has put on the 
white robe. Rich as the country may be with glorious 
memories, she cannot part with these. The heavens 
may burn with other celestial lights ; the mariner will 
not spare the north star. The New-England Colonies 
inaugurated the Revolution. The first blood was spilt 
upon their soil. The four New-England Colonies, with 
a population not exceeding nine hundred thousand, fur- 
nished to the war (in continental troops and militia) 
over one hundred and forty-seven thousand men. With 
one-third of the population of the United Colonies, they 
furnished two-thirds of all the troops ; Massachusetts 
raisins: some twelve thousand more than the six Southern 
States. This is said in no spirit of boasting, Mr. 
Speaker ; but, when our lot and right in the homestead 
are questioned, it is not ungraceful to allude to our 
labors in securing it. 

To the administration and policy of Washington, New 
England was a firm and unwavering friend. For sixty 
years, her pohtics, with slight departures, were of his 
school. Need I say, that, if the policy and counsels of 
the Father of his Country had been followed by the 



208 NEW ENGLAND AND THE DNION. 

whole country, this terrible civil war would have been 
averted; that, since the resolutions of 1798, we have 
increased the centrifugal forces of the Government, in- 
stead of the centripetal ; have thought too much of the 
States, and too little of " that unity of government which 
constitutes us one people " ? 

There was a brief time, indeed, when New England, 
her commerce paralyzed, her industry prostrated, by the 
policy of the National Government, seemed to be start- 
ing from her sphere ; but she soon easily and naturally 
resumed her wonted orbit of order, law, and obedience. 
From the peace of 1815 to 1850, faithful to the Consti- 
tution and the Union, she advocated broad and national 
views of the Constitution, and a liberal use of the powers 
of the General Government for the development of the 
industry and material resources of the country. 

New England is often reproached on this floor for 
the Tarift" policy of the Government. She did not in- 
augurate the policy. It was not her choice. AVhcn the 
country embarked in it, and the industry and capital of 
New England liad been diverted to manufactures, she 
felt, and justly, that they had a claim to the continued 
care and protection of the Government. At no time 
since the inauguration of this policy has she controlled 
the counsels of tlir Administration; and. for the greater 
part of tlie time, she lias had a limited influence in those 
counsels. She has, indeed, believed that such an ad- 
justment of duties on imports as would protect our 
industry was just and wise and beneficent for all ])arts 
of" tin; country ; but, for the inaugurating and establi>h- 
iiiLC the tarili' policy, she may not claim the credit, and 
is not i"esj)ousihle. 



NEW ENGLAND AND THE UNION. 209 

The charge against New England, of a narrow and 
illiberal policy towards the West, is also without the least 
foundation in fact. In his great speech in reply to Mr. 
Hayne, in 1830, Mr. Webster indignantly repelled the 
charge, then first conjured up, for narrow party pur- 
poses : 

" I deny that the East has at any time shown an illiberal policy 
towards the West. I pronounce the whole accusation to be without 
the least foundation in any facts existing either now or at any pre- 
vious time. I deny it in the general, and I deny each and all its 
particulars. I deny the sum total, and I deny the detail. I deny 
that the East has ever manifested hostility to the West, and I deny that 
she has adopted any policy that would naturally have led her to such 
a course." 

With respect to the distribution of the public lands, 
the Governor of Massachusetts, and one of her wisest 
sons (John Davis), in 1841, in a special message to the 
Legislature, declared " that the new States were entitled 
to a more liberal share of the public lands than the old 
States, as we owe to their enterprise much of the value 
the property has acquired." And a resolution was passed 
by the Legislature, declaring, 

" That, in the disposition of the public lands, this Commonwealth 
approves of making liberal provisions for the new States ; and that 
she ever has been, and still is, ready to co-operate with other portions 
of the Union in securing to these States such provisions." 

Equally just and liberal has been the course of New 
England in relation to the system of internal improve- 
ments in the new States. Said Mr. Webster, in the 
speech before referred to, 

" I assert, boldly, that in all measures conducive to the welfore of 
the West, since my acquaintance here, no part of the country has 
manifested a more liberal policy. I beg to say, sir, that I do not 

27 



210 NEW ENGLAND AND THE UNION. 

state this Avith a view of claiming for her any special regard on that 
account. Not at all. She does not place her support of measures 
on the ground of favor conferred. Far otherwise. What she has 
done has been consonant to her view of the general good, and there- 
fore she has done it. She has sou^rht to make no jrain of it : on the 
contrary, individuals may have felt, undoubtedly, some natural regret 
at finding the relative importance of their own States diminished by 
the growth of the West. New England has regarded that as the 
natural course of things, and has never complained of it. Let me see 
any one measure favorable to tlie West which has been opposed by 
New England, since the Government bestowed its attention on these 
western improvements. Select what you will, if it be a measure of 
acknowledged utility, I answer for it, it will be found that not only 
were New-England votes cast for it. but NeAv-England votes secured 
its passage." 

That her course since 1830 has been equally just and 
liberal, the records of both Houses of Congress attest. 

For the great system of internal improvements, the re- 
sult of private enterprise, by which the Valley of the 
Mississippi has been brought so near to us, and its vast 
material resources so marvellously and rapidly devel- 
oped, the West is to a very large extent indebted to the 
capital and enterprise of New England. Capital was 
doubtless seeking a profitable investment ; but the in- 
vestments would not have been made but for the large 
reciprocal trust and confidence between New England 
and the West. 

Five hinidred million dollars, ;i liberal share of the 
ainouiit iVoin New Enji^laiKl, have been expended in 
tlic canals and railroads constriictod to givi' to the great 
lakes a new outlet to the sea. The great consumers of 
the products of the free States in this valley are north- 
cast of it. Forty-nine fiftieths of the cereals of the 
North-west, seeking a foreign market, find their way, by 



NEW ENGLAND AND THE UNION. 211 

these new channels of communication, to the tide-waters 
at New York. The real mouths of the Mississippi open 
to the North-east. Art, labor, and the iron will of man, 
are stronger than Nature, and mould and bend her to 
their purposes. Ties of birth, kindred, marriage, early 
associations, memories of fatherland, common institu- 
tions, common culture, thought, faith, reciprocal and 
interdependent interests, bind the North and West to- 
gether. Crafty and selfish politicians cannot sever them. 
They can sever from themselves the afi"ection and con- 
fidence of the people of both sections. They can leave 
themselves out in the cold. 

Such, Mr. Speaker, briefly, hastily stated, were the 
principles and traditional policy of New England to 
the close of the first half of the present century. 

I do not shrink from the consideration of her position 
and relations to the Union for the last twelve years, or 
her position to-day. I must speak freely, and with the 
love that casteth out fear. I am not insensible of 
the power which radical, not to say disorganizing, revo- 
lutionary views have acquired among us ; the setting-up 
of private speculations and feeling under the guise of 
" higher law," and party formulas and dogmas above 
the obligations of duty and the mandates of the supreme 
law of the land. 

There are, I know, men in New England who are 
opposed to the existing Union, to " any union with slave 
States." They control, to some extent, the political 
machinery of the States. They are the channels through 
which the honors and patronage of the National Go- 
vernment are chiefly distributed. They are men of 



212 NEW ENGLAND AND THE UNION. 

talent, culture, ubiquity, and intense activity ; an activity 
and ubiquity that supply the place of numbers. Some 
of our pulpits and presses catch and reflect the glow of 
their fiery zeal. These, Mr. Speaker, are not Puritans, 
nor the children of the Puritans. They have wandered 
from the fold and faith of their fathers. Government, 
to them, has no root in the divine will or counsels. 
They know not, they cannot understand, the liberty of 
obedience. They do not recognize the truth, that the 
powers that be are ordained of God. Some of them 
have substituted a diluted Platonism, or German panthe- 
ism, for the gospel of Jesus Christ, and mutual admira- 
tion for the worship of Almighty God. But these do 
not represent the mind or heart of New England, its 
material or moral forces. This condition of things with 
us is not more the fruit of the activity of the radical, 
than of the supineness and neglect of duty of the con- 
servative men of New England. "^'heij have been 
warned of the coming perils, and have either failed to 
foresee and gauge them, or have shrunk from the con- 
flicts necessary to avert them. We cannot now escape 
without much tribulation and suffering ; nor is it just 
that we should. We hold our institutions at a price we 
would not pay ; sleepless vigilance. We were not 
faithful to our sacred trusts: we permitted visionary 
theorists, sectional partisans, fire-eaters, and radicals, 
North and South, to administer a government founded 
in concession, conciliation and compromise ; and Avhich 
we knew, or ouglit to have known, could never be up- 
held and maintained in any other spirit than that in 
whicli it was founded. These men liad power to raise 



NEW ENGLAND AND THE UNION. 213 

the storm : they have no pilot to weather it. The ship 
is drifting, no firm hand at the helm, between anarchy 
and despotism. Oh for the master-spirit to say to the 
waves, " Peace, be still ! " 

Mr. Speaker, the people of New England are, for the 
most part, a law-loving, a law-abiding people. They 
love liberty ; but they know it can be had only in obedi- 
ence to law, obedience of those who make and those 
who execute the laws. They have the largest possible 
stake in the present Union of the States. They do not, 
cannot fail to see, that, under any reconstruction of the 
Government, they have nothing to gain, every thing to 
lose. They will hear, reflect, give heed to the voice of 
reason and duty. They cannot be moved by scoff's and 
sneers ; they cannot be driven. They make part of the 
Union. The largest sacrifices to win and secure it were 
those of their fathers. Its priceless blessings are theirs, 
in trust for their children. They will be faithful to that 
trust. The attempt from other States to exclude them 
from their inheritance would inaugurate a war, com- 
pared with which all we have seen of this would be but 
as ministrations of mercy. If those holding power in 
New England shall use it, or try to use it, to sever us 
from the Union, or to consent even to separation, they 
will hear in every city, town, and village, on every plain 
and hiU-top, the cry which was rung out on the 19th of 
April, 1775, " To arms ! " The men of New England 
have sworn, by the God of their fathers, that neither 
secession nor abolition shall rob them of their bhth- 
right. 

Mr. Speaker, I have trespassed too long upon the 



214 NEW ENGLAND AND THE UNION. 

indulgence of the House, without having touched the 
grounds of attack upon the social and personal charac- 
ter of the Puritans and their descendants. It is scarcely 
necessary. " By their fruits ye shall know them. Do 
men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ? " I 
will, however, glance at one or two points, which, my 
observation here has convinced me, have had their effect 
upon those who have not been with us, and are not 
familiar with our history. 

Upon no point is attack more frequent, or error more 
prevalent, than upon the social j^ositioii, the culture and 
manners^ of the Puritans. The association of Puritan- 
ism with rudeness, and coarseness of taste and manners, 
has really no higher source than the doggerel of Butler, 
and the sneers of Hume and other apologists for the 
House of Stuart. In birth, culture, manners and 
wealth, the Puritans were among the best gentlemen of 
England. Need I recall to your recollection Hampden 
and Waller, the Earl of Essex, Manchester, Fairfax, 
Harry Vane, and John Milton, not less the world's 
greatest epic poet than the gentleman trained to all 
the graceful arts of his time \ Need I remind you of the 
fact, that the aggregate wealth of the third House of 
Commons of Charles I., a Puritan House, was estimated 
to !)(' lliree tinu's that of the House of Lords ? Need 
I r(>fer you to the IxMutil'iil picture of a Puritan house- 
hold in tlic Eifc of (lie young regicide. Colonel Hutch- 
inson, by his accomi)lished and devoted wife \ 1 may 
even suggest, that the sober garb of the Puritans has 
descended to the gentl(>mcn of England, and the lace 
and embroidery to his servant. If you desire further to 



NEW ENGLAND AND THE UNION. 215 

examine the subject (of little moment, I confess, in a 
country so democratic as ours), I invite you to read an 
admirable paper on this point in Sanford's " Studies of 
the Great Rebellion ; " or the ninth chapter of the first 
volume of Palfrey's " History of New England ; " a 
work worthy of its great theme. 

Puritanism, like other movements political or reli- 
gious, suffered from counterfeits. When its principles 
had triumphed, coarse, vulgar, greedy men assumed its 
garb, and debased and dishonored it ; as men assume 
now devotion to the freedom of the slave, whose real 
devotion is to contracts for spavined horses and rotten 
vessels. Canters, self-seekers, wolves in sheep's cloth- 
ing, men with long prayers and longer visages, followed 
in the path of Puritan victory to clutch its spoils. The 
true Puritan was sober, godly, self-denying ; feeling he 
had a divine work to do, and doing it with his might. 
To say that he did not attain to his own ideal of duty, 
is to say that he was very like sensible and good men of 
later times of larger light and larger pretension. 

Another alleged obnoxious trait of character of the 
Puritan (and his descendant) is his love of money, and 
craft in getting it. I meet the allegation at the thresh- 
old; I take issue on the fact; I utterly deny it. I 
have had opportunity to know something of the people 
of New England in the different calHngs and paths of 
life, and something of men on both sides of the water. 
I have studied men, with some dihgence, in history. 
The New-Englander (" Yankee," if you please) loves to 
get money. He wants success in every thing to which 
he puts his hand ; and he is very apt to succeed. He 



216 NEW ENGLAND AND THE UNION. 

has thrift and providence. He lays by for the rainy day 
and shady slope of life. He abhors a vacant pocket, 
and the dependence which attends it ; but, as a race, no 
men are more honest in getting money, or more liberal 
in the use of it, than the men of New England. Libe- 
ral in their own households, and in every work of kind- 
ness and Christian charity, no people live better, or give 
more freely ; or understand better, that, to do either, a 
wise, economy is necessary. Of course I am speaking of 
the general rule, which, like every rule, has its excep- 
tions. Every soil has its crop of hucksters and petty 
craftsmen. Ours are peripatetic, and are very apt 
to emigrate South or West. Some find their way to 
Government agencies ; and a few half way back, — to 
Washington. 

The New-Englander is said also to be an intermed- 
dler. How far, politically, he has concerned himself 
with the rights and interests of other portions of the 
country, I have had occasion brictly to suggest. Upon 
the matter of slavery, I cannot deny that a portion of 
our people have trespassed beyond the just bounds 
of State comity. But I cannot forget, that the bearing 
of the slaveholders toward the people of the North has 
naturally provoked liostility ; and that from the sparks 
emitted in the collisions of extreme men, on cither side, 
tlie fires of civil strife have been kindled. As an indi- 
vidual, tlio New-Englan(l(>r luis curiositv lar^c^ly devel- 
oped. He loves to know wliat is going ou in the world. 
He is inquisitive ; but those ([ualitics are not i)eculiar to 
him. They were found in the first man and woman, 
and will be in the last. " liut out of the riud of one 



NEW ENGLAND AND THE UNION. 217 

apple tasted," said John Milton, " the knowledge of 
good and the knowledge of evil leaped forth into the 
world, as twins cleaving together." With all his interest 
to know what is going on in his neighborhood, he wor- 
ships the god of boundaries, and will not remove the 
ancient landmarks. No man respects more constantly 
the division-line between his own and another's rights. 

I conclude, Mr. Speaker, with a single suggestion. 
It is, that, under our system of Government (many 
States and one nation), differences of culture, manners, 
domestic institutions, of climate and its productions, and 
of forms of industry, may be reconciled, if there be the 
spirit of conciliation. Nay, more : experience is rapidly 
developing the truth, that in that diversity has been our 
security. 

" All nature's difference makes all nature's peace." 

Those differences all removed, the probable result would 
be the absorption of the powers of the States in the 
central Government, toward which our steps are tend- 
ing. The States gone, or stripped of their most impor- 
tant functions, the central power, call it republic or by 
any other name you please, would be, in substance, a 
despotism. 



THE END. 



28 



